


The Witch Of Whelan's Wharf

by Varynova



Series: Of Satanists and Solipsists: Consider The 80s [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, CW: Discussion of Disability, Era-Appropriate Terminology For Gay And Trans People, F/F, If You Call June Egbert A Genderbend I Will Steal Your Kneecaps, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Real-life Suicide Mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2020-11-27 10:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20946731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varynova/pseuds/Varynova
Summary: [This story is on indefinite hiatus pending rewrites. Apologies!]There exists, up on the hill above your dying Oregon fishing town, an old abandoned mansion.  You weren't dared to rob it, no, but you couldn't help risking a look...The year is 1989, and you've all heard the stories, but who would be afraid of one magnate's granddaughter, a girl nobody's even seen in a decade?





	1. Chapter 1

If you were somebody else, you might think, about a fall day like today, that the swirling frangipani ochre of the fading sunlight, crushing the town in the muted hues of its descending tree-flowers, stank of finality. Even away from the fish-gutting plants on the seaside, you might still say that this town's reek has emanated since white people 'founded' it in the 1850s. The very grounds of it are a violence, and as the grasping purple sky scrapes its hideous claws across the stubby concrete horizon, sinking below the earth to breathe no more, you might wonder, for a moment, why the town didn't collapse into the vile sinkhole with the crepuscular rays.

But you're not somebody else. You're SKATER EVRIKS, thief-queen of the dockside, and you have to live in this dump of a town.

About sixty miles outside Portland, there's a city by the name of Whelan's Wharf. It's named that way because it's a dock town, or was, thirty years ago. Now, most of the warehouses down by the oceanside are decrepit husks, tumbledown and drafty frames left disused by larger corporations shipping their bulks inland, towards the true metropolis.

You don't give a shit about all that. The gothic decrepifying atmosphere, the ravages of time on a town decaying as VHS dominates the home video market over BetaMax? The slow decline of the American rural coast, even as CDs have only been in stores for seven years? That shit would bore you, if you'd ever even thought about the juxtaposition of it in the first place. Which you haven't, and you aren't going to right now, because it's after 3 AM, and you're busy breaking into HARLEY MANOR, the statuesque monstrosity that's been looming over the Wharf for as long as anybody can remember.

The last tumbler on the window latch snaps into place with a satisfying _k-tick_, and the makeshift tension wrench in your thumbgrip lurches.

You are, at this moment, crouched on the narrow concrete ledge, and its cold licks up under the holes in your beaten-in red kicks. With one arm hanging off of a stolid gargoyle to support your weight, you practically dangle from the thin overhang. If you were to take a moment to gaze at it, you'd see its hideous grin, human baby carved into its mouth, but you don't, because you're busy.

Below you-- ten feet, maybe twelve-- your band of friends bop giddily back and forth, silently. You can only see them in the newly-minted darkness by the light glinting off of the literal fountain standing in the side yard, disconnected and mildewing. Its stagnant waters are filled to the raised, filigreed tile edges with lilypads.

The waffle pattern of your shoe meets the gray iron lattice on this side of the glass, and you ease it open. The wind catches the opaque curtain over it, billowing inward, but half of it mats and flaps over some obstruction just inside.

You hop in the sill, careful to land light on the wooden floors. A quick tug separates the curtain from its rod, and you catch the end still ladened with rings before they clatter down. The obstruction, now uncovered, is a grisly sight: a stuffed, mounted polar bear, standing ten feet tall easily, claws reared as though to maul some poor onlooking seal.

Even in the dark, you can just make out the embossed letters on the placard at its feet.  
URSUS MARITIMUS TYRANNUS  
"Rex"

You shudder. Christ, what a horrible thing to display, especially through the most obvious window through which guests might enter. Talk about a bad first impression, whoever decorated this place!

The rest of the room, from its wood paneled walls to the mirrored shelves of what you hope are metal trophies rather than the mammalian sort, assaults your every sense with must. The plume of dust that arises from the bear after a mere brush of cloth seeks out your airways like some pernicious airborne plague, and the whole room smells of nothing more than dead skin.

A quick glance around, the thin beam of your flashlight barely exposing more than endless mounds of furniture and cloth-covered piles, then you reassert exactly what task demands your focus; you bunch the curtain, grab two more, and start joining ends with quick double fisherman's knots, concocting a long enough hank to allow safe entry into and egress from this window.

You tie it sturdily to Rex's foot, and toss the whole bundle out.

Moments later, two of your companions join you; Martin Sorvat worries his hands, the slimmest, youngest of the lot, with some sticky substance still shining his tuft of thick, mohawked hair. And your second-in-command, Piper Reyotez, who adjusts her teardrop glasses up her nose, quick fingers searching out trinkets and valuables amongst the many dark-wooded cabinets and drawers already.

A quick gaze down to the patio proves to you that the others have formed the catch-team, blankets extended to keep safe imminently dropped valuables.

A good heist, well underway. You're lucky, as usual, that without any planning you happened to set foot in the room holding what appears to be a great variety of totally unsecured valuables, or at least a whole bunch of old shit. You know your expert team will be able to strip it bare, assuming nobody discovers you in the next couple minutes.

Except for Martin, who stands stock-still in the entryway, casting a pigeonlike silhouette against the unrisen moonscape.

You bare your teeth, loosing a sharp whisper between them.  
SKATER: Mart8n!  
MARTIN: uHHHH,,,  
The boy wheezes, clearly assailed by the same particulate you were, and less steeled to this life of antiquing-slash-crime.

SKATER: For the love of fuck, Martin! We're not exactly worried some8ody lives here, 8ut for shit's sake we have to get a move on!

Martin doubles over in reply, eyes now fixated on your shoes.  
SKATER: Oh for the love of--

Your whisper breaks in your exasperation. You take the two steps back over to him, hand meeting his shoulder.  
SKATER: I know this is your first run with us, and ton8 was your 8ig first night, 8ut you're 8lowing this.  
SKATER: Remem8er???????? We went over this in detail! Gra8 valua8le shit, toss it down to the catch team, scurry away again with aaaaaaaall the loot!  
MARTIN: tHAT'S HARD TO DO,,,  
MARTIN: wHEN i CAN'T BREATHE,,,,,,,,,

His tiny hands catch on his knocking knees. You try your best to heave him up, and manage to unbend his back.  
SKATER: The quicker you steal something worth our time, the quicker you earn your keep here, huh??

But before you can drill in the exact lesson with another good look around the room and more simple instructions for the poor foolish kid, a thick, oaken slam reverbs through the walls, coming from below you.  
SKATER: SH8!!!!!!!!  
SKATER: Gra8 SOMETHING!!!!!!!!

The poor boy flails, but you can't see what he manages to nab. You whirl around, just as the thump-thumping reaches outside the door.

A high, shrill voice rings out from behind it. Around you, both your assistants hasten to make their exit. You snap off your flashlight, plunging the room into blackness once more.

JADE: is somebody in there????  
You hear the distinctive sound of a rifle being primed to fire.

SKATER: Sh8 sH8 SH8 GO GO

Your hissing whisper whips your compatriots into a frenzy-- Piper, with her armload of winnings and tchotchkes, Martin with something as large as he is, that you can't make out just from its shape-- and they scramble over the lip of the window as you put on your brightest, singsongiest voice.

SKATER: Just a minute~!

Your lieutenant helps get the boy out and down the line, from the sounds of it. Piper knows what to do-- escape with the goods. Your whole crew does, really, you're just here to buy them time from a gun-owning victim who would otherwise be taking potshots from your escaperoute window.

JADE: oh thats okay i can  
JADE: HEY!!!!!

The door bursts open. In the bare evening light, your trained eyes can just make out the figure as...

A girl your age stomps into the room. Her whole outline is smudged with tresses of long hair, so much of it that it seems to swirl and eddy around her entire body, as if making her form indistinct with its volume. You can still tell that she is doubtlessly pointing a single-loading rifle in your direction. But you can detect no other details, save her quivering voice. Whoever she is, you're scaring the _shit_ out of her. Fair play, given that this _is_ a home invasion.

JADE: who the FUCK are you!!??  


SKATER: Milkman? Here to deliver your milk!  
SKATER: That window is very unsafe, though. I could've 8roken my neck!  
JADE: GET OUT!  
SKATER: Is that any way to treat your m--  
JADE: GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT OR I WILL CALL BEC  
SKATER: Geez! Okay, lady!  
SKATER: We thought this place was a8andoned, years ago!  
JADE: well its not!!  
JADE: im jade and i live here!!!!  
JADE: and completely alone, too!  
SKATER: Is that so?

A moment passes. You almost expect her to say something, to practically confirm her statement, but she hefts a belabored sigh.  
JADE: who the hell even are you??

Good thing you prepared those fake names.  
SKATER: Why, my name is Tekres Aksirv, and I come from... a land faaaaaaaar away.  
JADE: and who was with you!?  
SKATER: Why, my su8altern... Eporyp Izeret, and our newest trainee... Tavros Nitram.  
SKATER: For when the police ask our identities, and don't say I haven't 8een helpful!  
You grin. _Good quick thinking, Skater._

JADE: youre quoting the fucking simpsons!!!!  
JADE: those are all fake names!  
JADE: fake fake fake!  
SKATER: Geez! Can you 8lame me?  
JADE: GET OUT!!!!!

The windows practically shake with her bellowing rage, and you leap immediately to the cord you had slowly fallen back to, and bunched in your hand. Somewhere, far below, a dog brays a low, bellowing bark, and it chills you to your bones even as you make your showy exit.

SKATER: A8scoooooooond!

> SKATER: Be JADE, five minutes ago.

Your name is JADE HARLEY, and you live alone. You prefer it that way, actually. It gives you time to putter, fiddle, solve problems and hash out equations. You're big on equations, and you think more people should be.

At the moment, you're wrist-deep in your latest project, literally. Your grandfather loved cyanotype images-- just a relic of his age, you suppose, as he was born in 1905-- and you've committed yourself to restoring a number of his old prints in the style he prefers. Your mixtures-- ferric ammonium citrate, oxalic acid; potassium ferricyanide, ammonium dichromate, more acid-- are laid out, your clothesline over a dripcloth, your darkroom engulfed in perfect empty blackness, like the planetarium when they shut off the overheads for the night and you can finally breathe, just for a moment.

Your Casio calculator watch, black and square at your wrist, beeps with the insistent reminder that the time is now 4:00 AM.

One hour to your thirty-minute nap, first of the day. Goggles on, gloves up, remember your process.

Then the thumping begins, and a muted voice-- tinny, conspiratorial, and hasty.

There is someone in your home. In fact, you have the thought before you quite imagine what it means, musing on it for a moment. Nobody is in your home, because nobody is ever in your home but you, and the dog.

But you realize. Somebody is _in_ your _home_. Gloves off, goggles off. Gun out?

Where is your gun? Did you leave it propped in the Hunting Room, or on the wall above the second downstairs hearth? Is it even loaded, or do you have your primers?

What would your grandfather _say_?

\--

Minutes later, you've successfully run off the slight young hooligans who were attempting to loot your home. As the last one careens out your window, you wait until you see her scurry across the lawn to tug free the hasty loop she tied around poor Rex's little paw.

But your arms are shaking as you try to slip the curtain back over its high rod, and you feel it tumble from your fingers with a thin clangor of metal rings on hardwood floor.

You slump down, scooting backwards against the wall. Your pulse is racing, actually. Your heart floods your ears with its pounding, and you scoop ragged breaths as the adrenaline overfloods your muscles. Too suddenly, they ache, tension dropping from them in complaining waves.

Your head droops to your knees, drawn up to your neck, and you shakily place your gun on the floor. Beads of saline emit from ducts inside your lower eyelids, and you daub at them gently with your shirtcollar, careful to not touch your eyes with acidstained fingers.

Those were the first people you've seen in weeks who weren't the pizza man. Who were they, even? Children out of school? Where are their parents? Are they local satanic cultists?

It doesn't matter. You are, once again, completely alone. _Good work defending your castle._

For some reason, and you can't imagine why, that thought sends your mind into a whiteout spiral.

Some time later, your watch beeps again, and you slump sidelong to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really should mark this fic with 'AU - Marge Versus The Monorail Aired 4 Years Earlier so I could make this one joke'.


	2. Chapter 2

Another night, another successful run on the local establishment. Well, you barely escaped with your ass intact, but you did, so there's that. Piper and Martin have hopefully guided the rest of the gang back home, and as you round the corner into it-- the steepled, abandoned HarleyCo warehouse that's been your makeshift living space for the past three months-- you breathe a sigh of relief. Everyone-- all nine of them-- are seated on their makeshift bunks and floormats, eyes turning to you.

You walk past them, past Martin struggling to right his prize, a shortish statue, cast in a blue material, as he wrestles to lean it against the wall. You can't tell what it portrays save that the angle you can see is a massive cloud of obscuring waves, almost like...

Long hair.

You tromp into Piper's back room, look across her desk. Stuffed animals, a few books in braille, pairs of glasses and tagging equipment for marking buildings and local passages. You have no idea why she keeps most of this sentimental shit, save as some reminder of bygone eras.

You hate bygone eras.

Piper shows a moment later, looks at you as you sit on her mattress, squeaking the coils of the bedframe with your uneasy bounces and tapping foot.

PIPER: YOU R34LLY FUCK3D UP TH1S T1M3

You stay silent, watching her glasses. She walks over to the desk, fiddles with a can of blue spray paint.

PIPER: DO YOU TH1NK SH3 C4N TR4C3 1T B4CK TO US   
SKATER: No. Defin8ly not, there's no way.   
SKATER: I gave her the fake names, and everything.   
PIPER: WHY TH3 FUCK WOULD YOU 3V3N T4LK TO H3R   
SKATER: 8ecause you 8arely escaped! She had a gun, I didn't want anyone to--   
PIPER: 1F YOUD KNOWN TH3R3 W4S SOM3BODY L1V1NG TH3R3 TH1S WOULDNT H4V3 H4PP3N3D   
PIPER: 4ND W3 WOULDNT H4V3 4LMOST GOTT3N C4UGHT   
PIPER: YOU R4N R3CON FOR TH1S ON3   
PIPER: HOW D1D YOU M1SS TH1S

She swings her cane up, pointing it accusatorily at your chest. You bat it away with a free hand, pointing back at her.  
SKATER: 8ecause I wasn't worried a8out it!  
SKATER: I'm still n8t.  
SKATER: Who gives a f8ck if some crackp8t agorapho8e finds out we ro88ed her?  
PIPER: TH3 COPS PROB4BLY  
SKATER: We wouldn't have to risk that if we just found a place to settle down!  
PIPER: W3D ST1LL N33D MON3Y DOOFUS  
PIPER: F33D1NG TH1S CR3W 41NT CH34P

You sigh. Of course you know that! Of course you've had this conversation a billion billion times with her; this is a hard group to corral, much less keep alive.

PIPER: 1 TH1NK YOU N33D TO L3T M3 T4K3 OV3R   
PIPER: 1F TH1S H4PP3NS 4G41N--   
SKATER: It w8n't. I'm going to plan something so 8ig it'll keep us fed for years.   
SKATER: If I f8ck that up, it's all yours, 8ut until I go down with my schemes I'm leader of this pack, not you.

After you say it, Piper turns her face towards you, betraying no emotion through her stony glare. But her creepy red eyes flick away again a short while later, and she shakes her ragged mop of short hair. She walks out of her room without another word.

After the Matron died, you all resolved you'd never do things her way again, and Piper Reyotez was hit the hardest by that. You and she were always the Matron's muscle, meting out any punishments she saw fit to render to any of the other members who failed to meet their quotas or screwed up bigtime. Sometimes she even had you kick the shit out of each other, just to remind you that you were weak, needed humility.

Only a few of the kids now are still around from those days, most having grown out of the scheme, or decided to go it alone, or just disappeared.

In fact, you're the only one left who really remembers how it all worked. You were basically her daughter, and she was good at toughening you up, making sure you kept scrappy and attentive enough to stay alive no matter what. Now, you're so good at this game you don't even have to hit people anymore, you just always know the right words to send them crumpled and sobbing into the floorboards.

It feels good. You can't help but like it, because it's what you have to do.

But now...

Now that you've seen the size of Harley Manor, and the face of the woman who you can talk to to muscle into it, you can't help but dream of all the ways you could use that place to hole up your whole crew, forever, feed them off that treasure trove for years to come.

You wander back out to the main floor, where the youngest crew have already been tucked into bed by the older kids. You examine the statue, now turned around, and it's exactly what you feared. The kid must've grabbed it off of its plinth, just barely light enough for him to carry, and she gazes back at you.

It's a statue of her, that girl you robbed, in some weird kind of blue stone, maybe marble or granite or something eccentric like that. It's probably worthless, because it's not like there could be any doubt about where it came from, but you have a plan for it anyway.

But even late that night, after each line and subplot of the whole scheme runs through in your mind a thousand times, that face is all you see, barely traceable in the dark outline above your bunkbed.

Jade, she said her name was Jade.

You can work with this.


	3. Chapter 3

You can't figure out everything they took.

Obviously you know which shelves got cleared off, which memorabilia got swiped generally, and while luckily none of it was valuable-- it's not like you come into this room much, so even its sentimental value is kind of low-- they did make off with a couple things you know you'll sorely miss. The worst is the fact that they apparently managed, despite missing a drawerful of silver cutlery, to steal an entire statue of you, one your grandfather meticulously carved many years ago to resemble some idealized, older version of yourself.

You hated it, absolutely. You could never fathom why the old man would waste his time creating some twentysomething recreation of the woman he wished you were, but you couldn't help resenting both his dismissal of the person you were and the person the object represented. But without its lifeless, unpupilled gaze leering out of that far corner of the room, everything just seems so much more pointless, somehow.

This room, like the rest of the house, was full of his blue women, the same snapshots you've been tirelessly restoring and enlarging. Now that it's daylight, the beams course unfettered through the slats in the windows, shining their withering energy into the curly-haired, grinning visages of some framed beauty or another. You momentarily consider boarding up the window-- blocking what is apparently an insecure point of entry into your sanctuary-- but know that it'd do no good as long as you tend not to even lock the front door during your naps.

You're mad they found the room with a bunch of depictions of you that you now must revisit, but you're exceedingly thankful they didn't stumble into your grandfather's room over in the other wing. He doesn't move much, anymore, but you think that that sort of intrusion would be radically too much excitement for anyone to bear.

You finish rehanging the curtains and step back out of the room, eager to not relive the memories haunting each dusty relic piled inside.

Harley Manor is truly massive, an endless series of rooms and floors inlaid with subpassages and dumbwaiters and chutes of all sorts. For example: outside of this trophy room is a balcony, on either side of that balcony are abutting hallways for more bedrooms, studies, special areas, laboratories; under that balcony is the main foyer, and off of it two parlors, a reading room, the secondary library, the anteaerarium, and the main kitchens for the first floor. It's all an odd mishmash, half concrete, half dark timber, on account of the simultaneous decline of access to wood and the Art Deco movement back in 1939 with the start of the second world war. At the same time all the wood from the area began being shipped into Portland for use in the Kaiser Shipyards, the builders of the mansion, you've always assumed, moved to a more chique gothic-revival-revival style, so the exterior is a mishmash of porticoes and curved colonnades alongside gargoyles and pointed archways.

The rounded balcony is no different, and as you meander along its length to overlook the haphazard mesh of stucco and tile strewn across the front wall of your home, crossing over the rug dividing the median point between rounded and squared balusters, Becquerel comes bounding up the stairs.

Bec shares the house's sense of scale, always looming in doorways or lumped on a couch. He too is a mix, some kind of samoyed interbred with either a midsized great dane or a particularly small Porsche. The quantity of hair you collect from the carpets and furniture just in the parts of the house you traverse in a given week are comparable to the amount of fuel used by a family sedan-- and you would know, after a few ill-advised inquiries into using it as a form of biodiesel. (The smell of carbonizing doghair, it turns out, is bad enough that even if it did contain adequate energy to run an engine, any compartments to which exhaust was vented would become unlivable.)

He gives you a deep, inquisitive sniff. While you can't even see his eyes through the tremendous mat of white fur, you can read enough from his posture and ears to detect the concern in his movement. You rub behind his ears, trying to prove to him that you're unharmed, but he slinks to the locked door to the trophy room and whines.

You sigh.  
JADE: no, bec  
JADE: no going in there right now i dont wanna have to supervise you  
JADE: cmon lets go get you some lunch!

There's a word Bec knows. He trots after you, giving an excited tailwag and a low _boof_, and you smile to him. God, what a good dog he is.

This is your lunch routine: you grab your half of a medium delivery pizza from the fridge, covered in at least three kinds of meat, and toss it into the microwave. As it heats through, you pull a rare slab of steak from the chestfreezer inset into the wall by the utility sink. Since this kitchen was designed for a staff of twelve to feed as many as sixty guests, there's enough storage space for a half year of the dog's food just in this one kitchen, provided you can thaw it, and you've got the technology to do it quick.

You're just glad nobody's ever asked how it works. You're pretty sure uranium only poisons living flesh, though.

Once the bleeding, reconstituted meat is thrown into Bec's bowl, you claim your steaming 'za from the cooker, and chow down yourself. You check your watch: it's half past one in the afternoon, and since you woke up from your most recent nap at exactly noon you've got four and a half free hours before you're having your next one, whether you like it or not. Should you work on portraiture, or some of your own artwork? Maybe reorganize something in the solarium gardens, or fix up one of the dustier rooms to make sure there's nothing for future thieves to capitalize on there? Or set the maid robots to dust the spaces in the house you DO actually care about.

Or perhaps...

Yes, the project in the basement is probably the most fruitful use of your time.

You're so glad you don't have any callers on a day like today. Not that you do on any other day, save that absolute aberration that was last night, but at least you can devote yourself wholly to the cause, the exploration of the universe and all its unerring truths. No distractions, no other brains, just your own, and your science.

And in the basement is the most pressing one of all, a fascinating system you've been muddling through for just over a year, now, and come no closer to discovering a hint of its meaning. It all began at the Whelan's Wharf planetarium, where they showed the Greek symbols for each planet, and that knowledge sparked some primal memory deep inside your mind of a book many years forgotten, and in relocating it the tome sent you home and down into your basement to tinker and experiment, to diagram and learn.

Yes, undoubtedly this is the most important way to spend your time.

You put thoughts of other people from your mind and head down into the basement for an uneventful day of discovery.


	4. Chapter 4

It's bright and early, by your standards, as you trudge up the winding path on the hill outside of town. Today, your return to the crimescene is predicated on returning the sculpture which your youngest thief so uncouthly took, as to curry favor with the bizarre young lady living here. You will make a grand apology, and-- having given her a full day to cool down-- will definitely be invited in for crumpets or racquetball or trigonometry or whatever hoity-toity dipshits like her do with their absurd amounts of free time.

You walk up to her tremendous door, having bypassed the front gate. You kick it, three times in quick succession, having no free hands to actuate the brass bull's head knocker on it. Or, y'know, because you wanted to.

You hear the sharp, bellowing barks of a dog coming from just inside, echoing around the corner as it doubtlessly trots from a side room to hound the door at which you stand. Still, after another moment and more hopeless barking, you receive no response, so you try the handle.

The door to Harley Manor swings open. _Shit, if I'd known that the other night..._

You try to put heist planning out of your head, at least for the duration of your cordial visit. You pull the patch from your left eye, allowing your septfurcated eye to focus in the relative darkness, away from the bright sun. As the door swings open, the massive white mutt practically flattens its chin to the floor, coiling and growling with sinister intent.

SKATER: There's a good monsterdog!

You sweeten your voice as much as you can, and bring the statue upright. You hope the smell of it-- somewhere between mothballs and ancient books-- will at least confuse the dang thing until you can lock it in a closet.

You inch inside along the tile, trying to keep your eyes on the canine threat, even as your attempt to baffle it with an inedible gift shaped like its master at least holds it at bay. You can't help but gaze upward into the postmodern architectural hellscape surrounding you, like some TV-show set nightmare combination of the Addams Family home and the Manson Family compound.

Then you hear a groaning from the next room over, piteous and strained.

JADE: ughhhh bec what is iiiiit   
JADE: that was only fifteen minutes this will have terrible knock-on effects for--

It's her, it's Jade-- trundling from a side room dressed in overalls and a loose-fitting white sweatshirt. Her massive birdsnest bedhead frizzes out on all sides of her, giving much the same halo effect as the other night. In fact, if it weren't for her choppy long bangs, you're pretty sure even her face would be obscured in the mess. You catch yourself ruminating on what a pity that'd be.

She stops in her tracks, rubbing her tremendous green eyes under her glasses before sliding them down again and practically jolting with recognition. Bec barks again, but this time out of surprise, and heels up behind her, watching you.

JADE: its you!!   
JADE: chin length messy black hair, diverted left pupil, approximately five foot eight   
JADE: completely unrepentant gait and laid-back neutral posture!!!   
JADE: youre that THIEF!!   
SKATER: Yes! It is I, your 8razen milkwoman, returned here in the light of day to give 8ack what we rightfully stole in a gesture of goodwill.

JADE: wheres my  
JADE: fuck!!  
She wheels around, probably trying to find her weapon, but you rush your hands out, make the most obsequious gesture you can fathom. Bec growls, but doesn't move.  
SKATER: You don't need a gun! I'm just here to talk!

Jade checks her watch, thick brows mashed together in skeptical consternation.  
JADE: its one forty five  
JADE: couldnt you have come back in twenty minutes when nobody answered the door??  
SKATER: I'm a very 8usy woman! I can't afford to dally around waiting for the snoozing princess in the house on the hill to deign to see me.

Jade's eyes narrow at this, and she fixes her huge spectacles up her nose.  
JADE: oh great youve come back to insult me now that youve threatened the integrity of my home  
JADE: disrupted my meticulous sleep schedule  
JADE: and stolen my grandfathers things!!!

What the fuck is wrong with her!? You came all this way to give her back this worthless statue, and she gets all self-righteous about having _way_ more stuff than one human could ever need.

Still, your grand plan hinges on making her like you, so you put on your biggest smile.  
SKATER: I'm 8etting that this was the most important of those, though.  
SKATER: And I'm 8ringing it 8ack to you as an olive 8ranch!

You extend the blue stone to her, and she side-eyes it, then you, then the statue once more.

But she slowly extends her arms, accepting it, and hauls it into the next room without a word.

You beam as she returns, hooking a thumb in the beltloop of your jeans and rubbing your other hand through your greasy hair, the most inoffensive 'aw shucks'y pose you can manage.  
SKATER: In fact, who's to say if you even figured out what else we took?  
SKATER: Since this was clearly the one that mattered to you.

Her mouth doesn't move, but the rest of her face does soften, after a moment.  
JADE: well okay  
JADE: i dont know why youd think that but  
JADE: its not like i can say youre wrong!  
JADE: is that all? can you leave now?  
SKATER: Is that how you treat a guest who 8rought you a gr8 present?

Nope, that scowl is back.  
JADE: what do you want  
SKATER: I want for nothing! I just felt like may8e you'd have a 8it more empathy for your local 8and of raggamuffins, so down on their luck they have to steal to survive!  
JADE: bullshit!! nobody has to do that

Now it's your turn to backpedal, look up at her in mock shock.  
SKATER: My goodness! How do you figure?  
SKATER: A poor lot of youths like ourselves, holed up as we are in a different 8uilding with YOUR name on it, and turned to a life of crime out of pure desper8tion!  
JADE: heyy how did you know harley was MY name  
You grin a wide, disarming grin.  
SKATER: Lucky guess. ::::)

She sighs, knits her fingers together in front of her chest. Her gaze falls, running back and forth as though she's reading lines on a page, or spinning some three-dimensional space in her head.

JADE: living in one of granddads old buildings huh  
SKATER: Yep! Down on the Wharf.  
JADE: i need to see it  
JADE: i own all of grandpas old buildings now and if somebodys living there i should know about it  
JADE: heck maybe thats violating some kind of landlord rules and i have to ensure the space is livable??  
SKATER: Ooh, pro8a8ly! We can't pay you rent-- or 8ackrent-- 8ut you have a duty to ensure we're properly cared for, and let me tell you, that place is a firehazard!  
SKATER: Surely you'd feel horri8le if eleven wayward teens perished in a terrible dock fire one cold autumn night!  
You can't say you expected this part of the plan to be so easy. You also can't say you expected her to demand to see your livingspace, but if that's the thing that can convince her that you are but a ring of pathetic, harmless moppets in need of a patron and caretaker... well, you'll run this grift like any other.

JADE: oh nooo! :o   
JADE: that would be so awful!!   
SKATER: Exaaaaaaaactly.   
SKATER: Shall we?

You step towards her, trying to put on your best jovial, nonthreatening smile, but at this proximity your grotesque miscalculation becomes apparent:

Jade Harley _reeks_. She does not merely lack a pleasant scent, but she stinks, what your uncultured nose might estimate as motor oil on top of some acrid almond smell and rotten meat, mixed with a healthy dose of sweat and body odor. You choke and reel, unable to hold fast to the nasal assault.

When she sees your eyes water and your smile disappear as you recoil, Jade blinks at you.  
JADE: whats  
JADE: whats wrong  
SKATER: You smell 8wful!!!!!!!!  
SKATER: J8sus, what did you roll in? Have you even changed clothes in days!?

Jade balks, sound issuing from her throat like a strangled chicken.  
JADE: what!!!!  
JADE: well EXCUSE me for not expecting GUESTS today!!!  
JADE: yes time got away from me!! my sleep schedule is such that i dont tend to change like every DAY but  
JADE: just because im BUSY doesnt mean you can be such a JERK to me!!

You furrow your forehead, as though you have any right to be offended.  
SKATER: If you wanna change 8efore we go, it might make a 8etter first impression!

She sniffs at you. You can't imagine your own unwashed stench is particularly noticable over her own, but she wrinkles her nose.  
JADE: youre not exactly a summer peach yourself!!

You let a moment pass, not letting up from your skeptical glare. You can't let her know that this withers you inside, just slightly, because you're quite sure that would have the whole racket you're attempting falling about your ears. Yes, that's why.

Jade sighs.  
JADE: fine!  
JADE: wait here  
JADE: and dont touch anything

You merely shrug, and step out onto the porch. You refasten your eyepatch, and adjust your glasses.

\--

JADE: sorry about the wait, i had to shut bec up in the side room so hed let me leave!   
JADE: hes a very protective boy

She steps out of her house, wearing a short jean jacket that cuts off just below the hem of her floor-length black skirt, and she buttons it tight against the cold autumn breeze. She looks so annoyingly, effortlessly put-together, like a dog that stumbled through an aisle of makeup demonstrations and came out perfectly-rouged and smelling of roses, panting and smiling the whole way.

Well, she doesn't smell like roses, and she's not wet, so whatever method of cleansing she utilized it wasn't a shower, but you're not gonna nitpick as long as her odor doesn't make you retch.

So you smile, turn towards the iron-wrought gate, and beckon. You'll be damned if you're going to expend the effort to pry it open without her help.

But she reaches behind the door, and flips a switch, and it trundles open on its own.  
SKATER: Fancy.  
JADE: haha not really!

The two of you meander out, and you lead the way down the gravel path away from her home.

Frankly, you're surprised luring her out of her home was this easy, given that you assumed she would literally be unable to pass the doorway, but out in the sun you can see the faintest upturned corners of her mouth as the light hits her from behind.

Jade points at your face.  
JADE: whats up with the eyepatch? :p  
JADE: i saw your funky eye before, is it some kinda birth defect??  
JADE: i thought you were a thief, not a pirate captain haha!

You catch your hurt frown almost immediately, but mortification flashes across Jade's face as she sees you wince. But you cut her off before she can apologize, swallow deeply for a moment and clear your throat.

SKATER: It's called a cola8oma.   
SKATER: I was 8orn with it, you're r8!   
SKATER: My eye can't focus properly, actually, so 8right light hurts really 8ad if I don't wear an eyepatch.   
SKATER: Another good reason to take my life of crime to the streets at dusk, level the playing field with the fully sighted.

You stuff your hands into the pockets of your hand-me-down leather jacket, as though it's possible just to play cool through a seriously heavy revelation about yourself like that. But perhaps you hide your discomfort too well, because she doesn't stop, her own eyes gazing into the sky.  
JADE: oh  
JADE: plus uh  
JADE: then you can swap the eye you wear it on when youre in the dark!  
JADE: keep your eyes adjusted and ready for anything!!  
SKATER: Again, not a pir8.

You sigh, and Jade sighs with you, but a moment later you trudge onward.

Jade makes her biggest smile, but it doesn't quite quell the sadness in her eyes.  
JADE: sooo you gave me a fake name before  
JADE: do i get to know your real name? :D

You extend a hand.

SKATER: Sk8r Evriks.   
JADE: that sounds fake too :p   
SKATER: Hey!

She takes your hand anyway, and the softness of her fingertips surprises you. She has the longest fingers you've ever seen, almost as long as your own, with broad nails kept short and rounded. You're suddenly very self-conscious about your own overgrown cuticles, black paint chipping off the tips and rough callouses on your fingers from ages of rifling through other people's belongings, and an absence of good lotion.

You try to put it out of your mind as you reach the base of the hill.  
SKATER: Take what you can get. My name's my name.

Jade yawns widely, and blinks. 

As you move into the city limits proper, the grass shoulder of the road out of town slowly morphs into exurban lawnways and paths inward, and you maneuver down cold sidewalks towards your makeshift home. On days like this you're thankful for company-- even if it's a woman you've barely met, who still puts you on the defensive, but you try to keep up the smalltalk regardless.

SKATER: So... about that huge dog of yours. What did you call him?   
JADE: his names becquerel!   
JADE: i call him bec   
SKATER: How old is 8ec?   
JADE: i dunno!   
SKATER: And what... kind of dog even is he?   
JADE: dunno that either

You tilt your head to her, stepping caddycorner off a curb cut to head towards the waterfront. You can see home from here, just a little ways down the rocky shoreline and out onto the jutting jetty adjacent the larger wharfs.  
SKATER: 8ut surely a vet could tell you.  
JADE: i dont know if becs ever been to a vet!  
JADE: he might not like it very much  
SKATER: He doesn't need a checkup?  
JADE: haha that dog will outlive me

The blasé way she says it stops you midstep, and Jade dips in front of you, matching the angle of your head with her own. She rolls her eyes.  
JADE: becs perfectly healthy  
JADE: i may not be more than a dabbling veterinarian but i pay attention to his health  
SKATER: Do you have no8ody to help look after you 8oth?  
SKATER: No family near8y, rel8tives or friends?  
JADE: nope...

Jade turns away from you suddenly, walks with a renewed purpose. Even the breeze gets a little chillier, and you jog to keep up.

JADE: i have a cousin who lives nearby i guess? and her dads probably still around   
JADE: but the last time i heard from anybody in my family was an aunt and uncle visiting europe!   
JADE: but its been at least three years since i even heard from any of them but june   
JADE: so that was probably ages ago!   
JADE: not like they ever write or call or   
JADE: augh!!

You catch up to her as she takes longer and longer strides, and you notice her fists are clenched at her sides.  
JADE: im not thinking about them right now!!  
JADE: im better off on my own  
JADE: who cares about family!! im good enough to take care of myself  
JADE: and i like having all my time to just be alone!!!!

Jade stops in her tracks, fuming. You can't help but stare for a moment, gawk at her suddenly unhinged rant.

God, if you had family-- any at all, living or estranged, nearby or far-- you're sure you would never be able to stop badgering them. You'd never say this to Piper-- or any of the other people in your crew-- but you'd flee this godawful city in an instant if you had family you could go mooch off of instead of having to stay in this shitheap town.

Your stomach gurgles, and you lay a hand to it, trying to ease the sudden tenderness you feel in your gut. Jade sees you wince, and her own expression softens.

JADE: sorry! i guess i dont think much about how other families must do things   
JADE: its like, geez, i bet your family doesnt even have an astralarium in your home haha

You blink.  
SKATER: Does my-- first, I've never even known any of my family! I've 8een an orphan from 8irth!  
SKATER: Second, the kids I take care of have a roof over their heads and I count myself fucking lucky for that, most of the time!  
SKATER: So don't ru8 it in people's f8ces when your 8iggest concern is whether or not the family you DO have will even fucking call you!

Jade stands tall, and you realize that she looms several inches over you. She turns away, dark hair billowing behind her.  
JADE: you think its so great to have family!  
JADE: even my grandpa doesnt do anything for me anymore  
JADE: just reminds me of the bad times when i had to take care of both of us!!  
JADE: well i pity you skater!  
JADE: for not realizing that family sucks and will only ever let you down!

She stomps off, arms crossed, to go stand at the bayside, stepping over the curb to stand on the grass abutting the reedy, murky water.

Suits you just fine; you don't need some rich snob's pity. But as you gaze over at her, you see she's rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket, and as you feel the regrettable burble in your stomach resurface you start to recognize it as another pang of guilt. So you trudge over, hands in your pockets, and stand next to her.

SKATER: ...Sorry. I guess I shouldn't presume to tell you what your pro8lems are.   
JADE: no its   
JADE: *snrff*   
JADE: its fine youre probably right   
JADE: i shouldnt feel this bad for myself!   
JADE: i should be okay with being alone all the time   
JADE: i do like it...   
JADE: its what keeps me sharp, means i have to be competent   
JADE: if i were around people im sure id be less able to take care of myself haha   
JADE: i should just keep feeling like i dont need anybody!

That's how she feels about being alone? For a moment you're almost so eager to tell her about your grand plan that you forget she's technically your mark, but as you remember what exactly you're trying to pull on her you feel the excitement curdle in your chest.

You reach an unsure hand around her, and pat her on the shoulder. She looks at you, her eyes red and nose snuffling, but right when you imagine she's about to tell you to not touch her she turns into you, bringing her front against your chest and arms around your back.

JADE: im sorry skater i know we just met and  
JADE: i guess i shouldnt even be talking to you because you DID try to rob me but  
JADE: i dont know why this bums me out so much and i cant stop crying :(  
You respond with a few more pats at the shoulder. It's not like you have any idea what you're doing to comfort somebody, but hey, at least she'll never know that.

SKATER: Ah.   
SKATER: ...There...   
SKATER: There?

Jade smiles, blowing her nose on her coatsleeve. You try to smile back, and as sure as you are that it's an unconvincing gesture, her tears appear to mostly dry up, and she rests the side of her head on your jacket. Her cheek is wet against your neck, hot breath creeping down your jacket, into your shirt.

You have no idea what she's doing. Before you can even think to stop yourself, the words blurt out of you.

SKATER: What the fuck are you doing?

You feel your whole body start to freeze up, joints locking in place as an unfamilar feeling wells through you, starts in your knees and ripples up to your shoulders. Jade doesn't move, however, her voice surprisingly quiet even as you can feel it in your ribcage, down your spine.

JADE: hey, you touched me first!   
JADE: i thought if you were trying to offer up some emotional support it extended to physical comforting as well...   
SKATER: Oh. Oh, I me8n, sure, 8ut let a girl know, next time.   
SKATER: I almost thought you were c8ming onto me.

Jade snorts once, but says nothing.

You wipe the sweat in your palms against your jeans as covertly as you can, and the woman resting her body against yours sighs a deep, reverberating sigh. You close the hug with your free arm, patting her lightly.

JADE: okay lets see this place of yours!   
SKATER: Gr8. You'll like the gang, I'm sure.

You wait for her to let up from the hug, and nod your head, walking down the street once more.

As you walk, you let the heady conversation swirl around you, pervade you. For some reason, just thinking about Jade, all alone in that huge, empty house, with nothing but the dust bunnies and that giant animal for company? It's almost too much for you to bear, like a weight on your chest.

You can't help but wonder, what if there was a fire? What if she collapsed? What if somebody tried to-- well, never mind that thought, but bad things can happen to a young woman living alone.

You look back at her, for just a moment, hair sweeping a broad trail behind her, hands in the pockets of her boxy denim jacket. Yeah, this is just as much for her sake as it is for yours. You both stand to benefit from your upcoming arrangement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we just take a moment to admire Skater's textbook AUTO-HARLEY


	5. Chapter 5

Skater Evriks has just hugged you and done her best to say things will be alright. She's been oddly quiet since you broke away from her embrace, probably because she doesn't want to deal with all the stuff you tried to dump on her about family and loneliness-- well, not loneliness, but definitely about being alone. Great job, Jade, the first person you talk to in a month and you immediately barf your feelings all over her shoes. But you've been unable to even feel properly silly about that because your head is still spinning, ever so slightly, and you've eaten enough pizza today, so instead of worrying you're hard at work trying to dissect what else might be the cause of your mild nausea.

As you are a scientist at heart, you have many theories for your current state of being: cosmic rays, for instance, or solar neutrinos! That's right, every second, 65 billion neutrinos course through every square centimeter of the planet from the sun alone, and cosmic radiation has been known to cause computing errors by flipping individual bits in the RAM of distributed computing centers on campuses the world over, so maybe it can have the same effects on brains.

...These are the only theories you can currently posit that do not indicate some concerning truth to her accusation that you are attracted to her. And as you have only known her for the duration of your walk over here, despite these feelings' rapid onset you otherwise cannot explain the fluttering in your heart when you look at her, with her confident little smirks and eyerolls and the way she clearly has some interest in your goings-on.

You fiddle with the bundle of stretchy bracelets you keep on your right arm next to your watch, to remind you of several ongoing projects in need of time management. You'll have to add a new one to devote some time to thinking about Skater, and how she makes you feel. After all, this is unlikely to be neutrino-related if it's a replicable effect just thinking about the strange thief with the anachronistic haircut.

Your sample size might be pretty small, but you conjecture that you like hugs, and resolve to try more of them in the future to test this theory. You are aware that, academically, you should feel angry with her, because of the breakin or what have you, but even she seems over that by now, so you figure your best bet is to adapt to whatever mood she turns your way, and see where this friendship goes. For science.

Plus, she accused you of 'coming on to' her, and that is simply not a phrase you are familiar with.

You ramble with her over the barrier between city concrete and the wood of the dock, walking down the raised planks towards a building clearly labeled across its side:

HARLEYCO.

Your grandfather was always terrible with his naming schemes. No indication of what the company did-- nor was there ever any in the corporate ledgers or notes, you've checked-- nor any subdivisions to manage different aspects of a business across shipping, or storage, or local distribution, or use. Whatever your grandfather had a warehouse for, it was under the exact same title as everything else of his in this town.

That term, though, 'coming on to'. Does it mean you want to kiss her? Is that what coming on to somebody is? You spent enough of your pubescent years poring over a weathered copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" from the '70s that you can imagine some of the transformational factors that might lead to such an attitude towards another person, but you must admit to never having attempted to feel that way before.

This, you imagine, is within the domain of science, an ignorance which must be immediately rectified. Therefore, you resolve to feel attraction towards another person under more controlled circumstances. Luckily, perhaps, you have one on hand.

Then Skater waves a hand in your face, and you recall what you were supposed to be focusing on.

JADE: so.. you live here?  
SKATER: Yep!  
JADE: are you the leader of this... outfit?  
SKATER: 8asically. Without me all these people are headless chickens. I've 8een here the longest, so I do the planning, I keep people sharp and focused, and I arrange all our... activities.  
JADE: where are the adults  
She gives you a cold glare.  
SKATER: We don't need any. Just fucks up a group like this, taking our stuff and forcing us to do dum8 shit that doesn't matter.  
JADE: :o  
SKATER: Oh, one more thing 8efore we go in: don't ask Piper how she came 8y her particular disa8ility.  
JADE: look im sorry that it sounded like i was making fun of your eyepatch okay :/  
She gives you a regretful look, then inspects her shoelaces.  
SKATER: No, it's not... like that. She'll think I put you up to it if you do, 8ecause I was the one who caused it.  
JADE: ...oh  
Skater is watching you again, and you realize you've been grimacing.

The high windows by the warehouse ceilings cast long rays on a cloudless afternoon like today, and even through the door you can see the slats between them toss shadows across the walls. You follow her up the stairs towards the closed-off second floor. Skater swings the door wide.

She beckons you inside, and you're immediately shocked by what you see. Meagre cots arranged across the floor, with shoddy hand-hewn bunks periodically stuck into walls to increase storage space. While this may be a warehouse interior, the space is surprisingly cramped, personal belongings strewn every which way. And unlike the ordered chaos of your home, it seems as though there is little regard for whose space in encroached on by what. Across the room, a record player is plugged into the one visible power outlet, and small speakers blare a song you're familiar with.

Skater unzips her brown bomber jacket, but keeps it around her shoulders, and tucks her patch into a pocket. Nobody looks up from their business as the two of you enter, though you feel like an intruder in some scary and intimate zone, like you're the one doing the breakin. She wasn't kidding when she implied she was the oldest; the whole group looks like a wide range of ages, with a few younger teens smattered among mostly a group barely younger than yourself. While most are speaking in hushed tones among companions or sitting quietly-- darning socks, writing in journals, or listening to tapes on Walkmans-- one shortish, angular girl, perhaps about your age, faces away from you in the center of the room.

She's attired in a mishmash of colors, bright red corduroy jeans practically straining to be heard over the sharp electric teal of her long-sleeved off-the-shoulder shirt and bright yellow belt. Her hair is barely constrained in a pair of low, uneven pigtails, not even brushing against the back of her neck. She doesn't turn to face you, but as she points her nose into the air, and appears to... sniff? in your vague direction, you see the top edges of her pointy carnelian lenses flash in the light.

PIPER: H3Y SK4T3S 1 JUST GOT B4CK FROM F3NC1NG TH3 STUFF FROM TH4T L4ST--   
SKATER: (Not now, Pip8r!!!!!!!!)

She whispers emphatically, jabbing an unsubtle thumb in your direction. You wonder what effect it was intended to create, given that they are still across the floor from each other, but you politely gaze away as to appear uninterested in their discussion on the vending of your priceless belongings.

Piper clearly detects something questionable in the air, and wheels around on one sneakered heel. She stomps with purpose towards you.

PIPER: YOU D1DNT BR1NG

She cuts herself off, putting her face disturbingly far into Skater's personal space, practically peering up into her nose.  
PIPER: WH4T TH3 FUCK 1S SH3 DO1NG H3R3

Skater doesn't flinch. Instead, she smiles, and turns her head to you.  
SKATER: J8 Harley, meet the personable Piper Reyotez.  
SKATER: Piper, J8 is the owner of our 8uilding, I have learned today, so it would 8e rather disadvantageous for us to 8ar her entry, hmm?  
SKATER: Once she found out a8out our terri8le plight she rushed down here immedi8ly with me to see just how 8ad conditions were. ::::)

Piper shoots her a look you can't interpret, half thick fuzzy eyebrows, half bared teeth. Her nostrils flare as she whiffs deeply in your direction, trying to discern you. But then the shorter woman backs down, and shakes her head.  
PIPER: F1N3  
PIPER: BUT YOU N33D TO COM3 W1TH M3  
She seizes Skater by the wrist, who shrugs to you apologetically as she's dragged away.  
SKATER: Introduce yourself to people, sh8ke some hands!  
SKATER: Karstan! Show Jade around, and don't 8e a dick a8out it!

You look around the room, suddenly very alone. All but one pair of eyes skitter away from your sight, returning to whatever tasks they were on prior.

The kid sitting closest to the speakers, who had been paying the most deliberate attention to it as you entered, stomps over. He's a head shorter than you, stocky, with a distinct hunch and underbite that you almost imagine he must be exaggerating. His hair sticks up all over the place, looking at once freshy-trimmed and totally destroyed, like he stuck his head in a ceiling fan.

JADE: hello?  
KARSTAN: WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU.  
JADE: hi! im jade  
KARSTAN: AND I'M PISSED. WHY DID SKATER FUCKING BRING YOU HERE?  
JADE: well she said i could  
KARSTAN: NO, STOP. I KNOW I JUST ASKED BUT I ALSO NEED *YOU* TO KNOW THAT I COULD NOT CARE EVEN IF YOU CAME HERE TO LITERALLY END MY FUCKING LIFE.  
You stand in silence for a moment. He crosses his arms, completely covered by his threadbare black turtleneck, and stares, waiting for you to account for your existence in his withering line of sight.

You aren't really interested, but you hope you can at least distract him.  
JADE: listen here jerk i own this building and the least i can do for you is make sure it wont burn down overnight!!  
JADE: anyway its more of a social call at this point anyway, and im mostly here at skaters insistence!  
JADE: so dont be shitty to me  
He harrumphs, turning his head away, but you cross your arms. But some part of your pushback causes him to raise an eyebrow and return his gaze, so you establish a softer tack.

JADE: listening to new order huh??   
JADE: i love new order :D

It is, in fact, Temptation blaring from his speakers, and you recognize it immediately as the remastered version from the compilation album, _Substance_, that came out a couple years ago. As the song ends, you shrug.  
JADE: you should flip over the record!  
JADE: i wanna listen to blue monday haha

The malcontent's eyes soften slightly, and his posture unstoops by perhaps an inch. He turns, stomps over to his music, and flips it as you indicated, starting the seven-and-a-half minute groove and closing his eyes. Then, a moment later, he reopens them and treads back.  
KARSTAN: JUST KNOW THAT I DON'T TRUST YOU.  
KARSTAN: SKATER ISN'T THE BEST JUDGE OF PEOPLE, BUT WHOEVER YOU ARE I'LL SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOUR SHIT, GOT IT?  
KARSTAN: EVEN IF YOU HAVE GOOD TASTE IN MUSIC.

You consider backing up, putting yourself against a wall, or at least trying to make yourself look shorter to perhaps inhibit some of his shouting, but he abruptly offers you a floppy sleeve-end, presumably to shake.  
KARSTAN: I'M KARSTAN.  
KARSTAN: AND I'M KEEPING AN EYE ON YOU, *JADE*.  
You take it.  
JADE: and i you haha

You smile. His eyes narrow, but you suppose it's a step up from shouting at you again. He plods back over to his bunk, sitting on the raised platform heavily, and you follow him, standing to face the room.  
JADE: uh care to introduce me to anyone?  
JADE: im afraid i wasnt aware there would be so many new people!!  
JADE: skater made it seem like we could just take a quick look around but now shes gone?

Karstan shrugs.  
KARSTAN: YOU GET USED TO IT.  
He wheels around, grumbling under his breath, and starts pointing out people.  
KARSTAN: IF YOU'RE TRYING TO MEET THE CREW, HERE'S WHO YOU NEED TO KNOW:  
KARSTAN: ZAQ HUA, BUT EVERYONE CALLS HIM 'HUSKIE'. HE DEMANDS IT, DON'T ASK WHY.  
A muscular kid, among the oldest, one ear in massive cupped headphones and eyes covered entirely with cracked sunglasses, gives a curt, inattentive wave from his mattress.

KARSTAN: LEIANNE TOPEJ. DON'T TALK TO HER UNLESS YOU REALLY NEED TO HEAR ABOUT TOLKIEN.  
LEIANNE: :3 < tolkien!? you like tolkien???  
JADE: oh y--  
KARSTAN: NO, SHE DOESN'T, LEIANNE, ALSO FUCK OFF.  
LEIANNE: :3 < okay!!  
The two steps that she shambled towards you-- invisible though she is under a massive, floppy blue toque and olive-green sweater and cape-- are immediately retracted, and she sits again, seemingly content to doodle in a notebook.

KARSTAN: ZAK IS OUT, SO COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY FOR THAT. UNLESS YOU NEED SOME DRUGS, THEN HE'S GOT A GOOD SIDE HUSTLE.  
JADE: like insulin???  
KARSTAN: NO, NOT LIKE-- OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, NEVER MIND.  
KARSTAN: ANYWAY HE'S WHY WE CALL HUSKIE HUSKIE. TOO MANY ZAKS OR ZAQS OR WHOEVER.  
KARSTAN: LUCAS IS DOWNSTAIRS TRYING TO GET SOME GARBAGE COMPUTER HARDWARE HE FOUND WORKING, BUT I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THAT SO WE'LL BUG HIM LATER.  
KARSTAN: AND AMARA SHOULD BE--  
A girl with long, curly hair pokes her head up from behind a nearby bunk, wide eyes barely raising over it before she stoops again, trying to see but be unseen.  
AMARA: hell0  
You can barely even hear her voice over the music, but you give a polite wave.  
AMARA: 0_0  
She disappears again.

He murmurs under his breath, blocking his lips from visibility with a cupped hand.  
KARSTAN: (BLAME ZAK FOR HER LACONIC FUCKING GHOST SHTICK. FUCKING BURNOUT.)  
KARSTAN: ANYWAY WE'RE THE CHARMING ORPHANS YOU'RE HERE TO KICK OUT, OR WHATEVER.

You're about to argue, claim to be moved by their plight or that you're actually going to find some way to help or the like, or at least explain who you even are, but at that moment the door to the back room swings open again, and Skater trudges out, looking mildly seasick. Piper storms out afterwards, one hand jammed in a pocket, the other using her cane to adroitly tap out a groundpath in a beeline for the door. You consider calling out to her, trying to introduce yourself or the like, but she's out the door before you can even think of what to say.

Skater scans the room, then looks towards you, and she walks over, uncrossing her arms.  
SKATER: I see you're already getting along with Mr. Kavat.  
Karstan mumbles something, but Skater ignores him.  
SKATER: Listen, I think we should talk. Piper's said we can use her room for a little pr8vacy, so come with me.  
You oblige, waving to Karstan before wordlessly taking up behind her.

Piper's room is clearly some former office, a foreman's room or clerical suite or the like. Apart from the spartan desk piled full of art supplies and toys, a wooden chair, and bed identical to the ones outside, the walls are doodled on extensively, in what appears to be the medium of crayon in bright reds, blues, and greens. While you recognize in the drawings the seascape visible from the storehouse windows, another part of it looks like verdant mountains, and a further bit of... clouds? Or perhaps something more abstract. Whatever it is, it's scrawled in a bloody scarlet color.

Skater sits on the bed, and waves a hand to the chair. You surmise she intends you to sit, so you pull it over, plop down on it.

SKATER: Sorry for pulling you in here, 8ut that song just 8ugs the shit out of me. No idea why.  
She shrugs.  
SKATER: So what do you think?  
JADE: well im glad i came over here for sure!  
JADE: i cant believe youre all living in this tiny space!  
SKATER: Frankly I'm surprised you were willing to leave your house in the first place. I almost expected to have to drag you, heh.  
She shakes her head, smiling. You're pretty sure you should be offended by that, but she said it so nonchalantly you almost find yourself agreeing with her.  
JADE: why do people say that??  
JADE: i get out when i have a reason to  
JADE: its just... been a while!  
SKATER: I... really? Everyone assumes you're crazy, you know that, right?  
SKATER: There are, like...  
SKATER: Stories. A8out you, and that house.  
JADE: :o

You suppose that makes some sense, actually. Your grandfather did tend to generate a lot of mystery, as by far the wealthiest man in the town. And you've done little to dissuade that image, keeping odd hours, ordering strange materials and parts by phone, never leaving the house... In fact, upon reflection, for your first time going out in in... you don't want to think about how long, you're doing rather well! You resolve to give yourself a pat on the back for that, but maybe not in front of company.

JADE: do they think im worshipping satan in there or something?  
You giggle, but Skater doesn't laugh, expression going to something closer to reacting to a foul smell.  
JADE: see its funny cuz i wondered if you guys might be cultists or something like that!  
This does help Skater's tight-lipped glare, and she clearly holds back her rippling gut laughter from ushering forth.  
SKATER: I'm sorry, wh8t?  
JADE: i dont know!!  
JADE: its silly, sorry :p

Through the door, you swear you can hear Karstan's distinctive voice muffle a guffaw likewise, but decide it'd be impolite if he were listening in, so you turn your attention back to the woman on the bed.

JADE: so uh   
JADE: piper didnt even introduce herself?   
JADE: is me being here a problem?? i can go if you need   
SKATER: It's certainly not a pro8lem, and any8ody who thinks so can take it up with me.   
SKATER: Consider yourself my guest. ::::)

You settle into the hard chair, crossing your legs. Skater leans against the wall, padded only by her coat.  
JADE: so... you mustve known piper for a long time then  
JADE: whats she like?  
SKATER: Listen, I know she doesn't exactly project the 8est first impression, 8ut you get used to the way she does things.  
SKATER: Heck, she's almost as competent as me, and that's saying something. ::::)  
SKATER: She's like that 8lind superhero, from the comics, y'know... That martial-artist crimefighter with the superpowers, D-- what's his name?  
She snaps her fingers several times, frustratedly attempting to expedite her recall.  
JADE: dr mid-nite?  
SKATER: ...Exactly. Yeah, exactly.  
SKATER: So, listen. My 8ig plan was gonna 8e to play up how much we needed your charity, and tell you we had to get your help to 8e able to survive the winter.  
SKATER: 8ut... I can 8e honest with you, right?  
JADE: of course  
JADE: its been less than two hours but you did show me your home...  
SKATER: We've actually only 8een living her for the past few months. We tend to move around a lot.  
SKATER: So...

Her voice goes conspiratorial, quiet, as if holding it back for the benefit of the crew outside.  
SKATER: Listen, I think we've got a lot to offer you. It seems like you really do need people to help just 8ust up the loneliness up in a 8ig place like that, and all I'm saying is that we...  
She licks her lips, and smiles, broadly. Maybe even genuinely.  
SKATER: We'll keep the place clean, we'll help 8ake sweets and keep the dog in line, and may8e even pitch in with the work you're doing solo, eh?

You fold back in your seat, shoulders hunching as the weight of the incipient request dawns on you.  
JADE: so...  
JADE: thats what this was about  
SKATER: What? What was about? I me8n it. You and I w8uld get to hang out so m8ch more. I know you said you don't need any8ody, 8ut...  
JADE: you dont give a shit about me!

You pull your jacket from the bed, having tossed it to one side idly upon sitting down. But Skater puts out a hand, pained look in her eyes.

SKATER: 8ut it seemed like y8u really enjoyed at least getting to t8lk!  
You fume, stomping a foot.  
JADE: i did!!  
JADE: youre pretty cool and just spending a couple hours wandering around and gabbing was a fun diversion!!  
JADE: but if youre gonna lie to me and say that something like this is somehow for my benefit instead of you just wanting to take advantage of me  
JADE: well  
JADE: i know youre lying!!

SKATER: J8!!  
You feel her hand on your upper arm as you turn, and when you look back she has a frown drawn across her whole mouth.

JADE: you...   
JADE: you really mean it dont you

SKATER: Jade...  
Her voice is almost quiet, now.

In the other room, muffled by the thick door, the last song on the last side of the last record plays: True Faith, with that weird punchy bass drum intro and the groovy synthetic bass. Even through your anger you can feel the familiar bassline already falling in rhythm with your heart, and your annoyance starts to ebb as it pulses and thrums in your ankles, up your calves. 

You sigh, and smile, and turn back around.  
JADE: yknow i love this song!!  
JADE: its just  
JADE: mtv plays the music video periodically and  
JADE: its actually really creepy!  
JADE: haha :D  
SKATER: You... watch MTV?  
JADE: its not what you think!!  
JADE: its only while im working...  
JADE: but the music helps me focus!

As you approach Skater she gives you an amused, ambiguous look, but lets you take her hands in yours. You pull her standing from the bed.

You can't help yourself, you just need to dance. This bizarre day has just been too much for anything less. It starts in your shoulders and you neck, and Skater laughs when she realizes what you're doing.

SKATER: C'mon. Don't ask me to do this. I've never danced 8efore in my l8fe.   
JADE: me either!! its not about that   
JADE: just dance with me, okay??   
JADE: just with me :D

You bite your lower lip to keep from grinning like an idiot, but it doesn't work. As Skater begrudgingly follows along, arms bobbing between the two of you in your grip, you find yourself mouthing along with the lyrics.

JADE: 'i used to think that the day would never come'   
JADE: 'id see delight in the shade of the morning sun'   
JADE: 'my morning sun is the drug that brings me near'   
JADE: 'to the childhood I lost replaced by fear'   
JADE: 'i used to think that the day would never come'   
JADE: 'that my life would depend on the morning sun'

You feel like Molly Ringwald in that John Hughes movie. You don't really know, you've never seen it, but still you saw her dancing in the trailers. Skater beams now, unrepentantly, feet shuffling in time with yours, and the music. She's right, she can't dance; but you're pretty sure you can't either, and you're still having a great time.

But her body slows, dropping away from the tempo of the music, and Skater purses her lips.  
SKATER: I'm honestly not sure how we're going to do once winter comes.  
SKATER: This place isn't exactly heated, or insul8ed.  
JADE: :o  
JADE: oh no i bet youre right!!  
SKATER: It's already getting a 8it chilly. We've got enough 8lankets for now, 8ut...  
JADE: but youll need someplace warmer to stay

You've stopped dancing as Skater laid out her quandary. You tuck the curve of your hand around your chin, pondering, but bring it away a moment later.  
JADE: listen i can call some contractors to come out here, give an estimate of how much work it'd take to insulate this place  
JADE: add some heating  
JADE: why subject yourselves to all this, right??

You can't read Skater's expression, but it seems like she's verging on some big question you can't intuit.  
SKATER: Is that really the 8est way to deal with this?  
SKATER: I mean, you're right, why su8ject us to all this?  
She sighs.  
SKATER: You have all that extra space up there in your huge house!  
SKATER: I know we're just a 8unch of down-and-out kids... 8ut why do you get all that to just yourself?  
JADE: ugh im sorry i just wanted to have some fun here but  
SKATER: What, you want me to say the dancing and ga88ing isn't a fun 8onus?  
SKATER: It is! 8ut I have to focus on my future, here.  
JADE: i thought you liked me :(  
SKATER: I do, damm8!  
SKATER: 8ut if you can't tell, I don't exactly have much wiggle room if I'm going to ensure that every8ody here survives the winter!

You blink. Survives?  
SKATER: Or did you think the stealing and selling other people's stuff was some kind of fun diversion, a monkey game for 8ored and wayward adol8scents?  
JADE: ...kinda?  
SKATER: Good for you. 8ut I promise you that our resources are stretched more thin than you think.  
JADE: but you guys have record players and books and stuff .-.

Skater narrows her eyes, like grandpa used to do when you asked to go outside during math time.  
SKATER: Just 8ecause we're struggling to survive means we can't have any downtime or enjoyment?

Oh. You guess that was a particularly foolish conjecture. You suppose that even you would eventually drop dead if you didn't allow yourself _some_ modicum of relaxation.

JADE: anyway i can just check on how easy itd be to turn this place habitable  
SKATER: ...We don't have a phone, if that's what you were hoping.  
JADE: haha no ive got a cellular one!  
From one of your jacket pockets you produce a cellular telephone, a black, square-bottomed Motorola MicroTAC, and tug up the antenna. You begin fiddling with the thing, flip it open, and start to key the number for your estate trustee into the rubbery buttons from memory.  
SKATER: W8, so that thing can call any8ody, anywhere????????  
JADE: yeah!!  
JADE: so long as there's signal nearby haha  
JADE: at least id hope so!! this thing cost me almost thirty five hundred bucks

You can practically see the dollar signs flit through Skater's eyes as they momentarily unfocus, and you wonder if she's about to faint. But she shakes her head.

SKATER: C'm8n. There must 8e an easier answer.

She puts a hand over yours, folding the phone closed again.  
JADE: :/  
SKATER: Don't you owe us that?  
JADE: do i  
Skater sighs.  
SKATER: May8e not. 8ut if you call contractors, they have to get it inspected, and we get evicted, and even if it's just until the work gets done...  
SKATER: That sounds like it would suck.  
JADE: ...yeah it kinda does  
JADE: alright  
You shrug.  
JADE: itll be a couple days and im busy tomorrow but  
JADE: sure you can bring your group and come move in with me  
Skater's eyebrows furrow, trying to read you.  
SKATER: You're sure?  
JADE: of course!!  
JADE: like you said, i owe you that i guess haha

You don't even wonder why the flattery failed to work but the thought that you owed them something was better. It doesn't occur to you to ask why you thought you didn't deserve to see Skater more, solely since she brightened up your day and got you to meet all these new people your age. All you think about is how much you can help all of them, what you have to offer their group.

You gab with Skater for a long time, into the evening. You can't help yourself; she's just so thrilling, nice in the oddest ways, and you feel as though you can even laugh about your upbringing, your favorite movies, your most obscure theories of the universe or all the planets you want to visit someday. 

Your watch beeps twice, but you resist the urge to stand, go home; it beeps again a full hour later, only once, and again you can't prise your focus away from the engaging conversation.

When it alerts you that it's time to sleep, you eyeball Skater apologetically.

JADE: uhhh would it be alright if i took a quick nap here  
JADE: i get that its a bit of a sudden request haha  
JADE: id go home but its pretty immediately gonna happen!  
SKATER: Hmm?  
SKATER: I mean, if you'd really like to try out the cots, get a feel for what we're living with, sure, 8ut you seem already pretty sold on letting us live with you...  
JADE: its not about that  
You yawn, and it overtakes your laugh. Your eyelids droop as your vision blurs, and you already feel your body flag.  
JADE: its just  
JADE: well ill explain in half an hour okay?

Skater sits on the head of the bed as you slump into it, and the last thing you see as you nod off is her attentive gaze, watching over you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious, the full names of every member of Skater's gang we have met so far are: Skater Evriks, Karstan Kavat, Martin Sorvat, Piper Reyotez, "Huskie" Zaq Hua, Amara de Godii, Leianne Topej, Zak Megara Mae, and Lucas Xolpera.


	6. Chapter 6

The huge metal gate to the old Harley place trundles open, and you drive your brother's shitkicked '74 Nova on through. You make this delivery at the same time every week-- 7:30 AM or thereabouts, on Saturday morning, of seven medium Meatstravaganza pizzas to the reclusive weirdo who lives here. She's only your age, and you don't believe a word of the stories you hear about her or her haunted mansion, but she has absolutely the strangest life habits of anybody you've ever heard of; you're practically certain she's never been to school-- because there's only one highschool in this town, and you, Dave motherfucking Strider, have never seen her at it, even though it's named after her house. You're also pretty sure that her Baskerville hound gives you the most unsettling stinkeye through the window every time you pass by the abandoned guard station out front. But she always requests you by name, and always tips about 50%, so you have an arrangement with your supervisor to always be scheduled for this shift even though it's otherwise pretty quiet.

You putter your cherry-red car around the cobblestone loop of the truly ostentatious driveway, settling under the front pergola.

JADE: hi dave!!   
DAVE: sup science girl

You've called her that every week for forever, even though she gives her full name by rote with each and every week's order. You don't know what horrifying yetimonster she has chained up in the basement that needs the strict diet of seven pizzas per week, but you're pretty sure she'd feed you to it instead if you asked any questions, so you pull out the pizzas from your little keep-warm satchel thing and hand them over to her. Then she hands over the crisp stack of identical bills, which you pocket without counting, and start to get back in your car.

This time, though, she turns around again before she hits the threshold, and chews on her lip for a second before asking a truly oddball question.

JADE: hey pizza guy   
JADE: odd question but   
DAVE: yeah   
JADE: do you know any satanists   
JADE: i uh   
JADE: have some weird questions i need to ask one!

You scruff your mop of blonde hair above your everpresent sunglasses, mulling over the absolutely incomprehensible request.

DAVE: yknow ive got my suspicions about a few people   
DAVE: im pretty sure my cousin plays that newfangled game dungeons and dragons   
DAVE: which seems a sickly haven for the alternative sort   
DAVE: ill check on them and report back to you as soon as i know   
JADE: or just send them my way!!   
JADE: they can just stop by, im always here!!   
DAVE: i bet you are science girl   
DAVE: see ya

She nods furiously and trots back inside the house.

This seems like exactly the sort of thing a mad scientist loner like her would ask in an awful movie, the sort June really likes. In fact, you peg it as so in-character for somebody fitting her profile that all you can do is shrug, assuming it'll end either in some hideous pulsating demon-baby flesh mound or the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Yeah, Rose'll know somebody. Heck, you don't talk to your cousin too much outside of school, so it's possible she never actually grew out of her satanist phase even as she matured away from being just a particularly quarrelsome goth kid.

You hop back into your vehicle and roll away, open windows trailing the sounds of _Paul's Boutique_ behind you.

\--

You are now ROSE LALONDE.  
Your weekly game of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons has just ended, and it went swimmingly. You have just transitioned to the newly-released second edition of the rules, and after tolerating much bellyaching you are gratified that your three pawns have begun to adapt to all of its newest-fangled concepts. You also credit yourself, of course, for being an expertly skilled dungeon master and storyteller.

ROSE: Congratulations on a successful first session, adventurers.

You stand from the woodbacked chair in your mother's dining room, and smile.

ROSE: Return to me your character sheets and I shall see you here, at the same time next week.

Jane Crocker passes hers back, a great broad smile adorning her face under those stark red 50's-style mom-glasses.

JANE: Goodness, but that one squidgey beastie was terribly frightening!  
JANE: What did you call it, Rose dear?  
ROSE: Aah, the gelatinous cube. Yes, I was lucky enough to locate its statistics from a borrowed copy of the Monstrous Compendium. I was concerned I would have to adapt the version from... _Dragon_ #124, I believe it was.  
MARY: My My  
MARY: Such Meticulous Preparation  
Mary-Kay looks you in the eyes, smirking slightly. June, seated across from her, giggles.

JUNE: did you expect any less from our rose?   
JUNE: haha. :B   
ROSE: Well, I was concerned it might prove too much for your first encounter.   
ROSE: But you dealt with it admirably, save for one rather poorly-rolled arrow.   
JUNE: heh, sorry jane!   
JANE: Aah, I am told it happens from time to time.   
JANE: It is not a bother, I shall reroll poor Agronob from scratch come tomorrow in preparation for our session next week.   
ROSE: Yes, sadly an Orcish Priest should be fairly easy to recreate, given the new restrictions on their unfortunate green souls.   
JANE: :B

You receive Mary-Kay's character, and she sits again to collect her player's handbook and assorted notes. Miss Anaam is, you think, looking particularly smoky this afternoon, practically turbid. Her messy tangle of hair dances as her precise, economical movements straighten out your dining room table after an afternoon of adventure. You look forward to Monday evening, on which you will have another excuse to adjourn to her basement for your agreed-upon televised entertainment.

ROSE: And how do you find yourselves adapting to the new system? Better than the old indices, I hope?  
MARY: I Shall Never Become Familiar With The New Terminology For My Class  
MARY: Indeed Now I Must Accept That I Am Not Magic-User  
MARY: And My Beloved Sandrina Is Now  
MARY: A Mage  
She picks up her colorful, bulky nylon windbreaker from the back of her chair.

The ever-excitable June Egbert returns her sheet, bouncing a leg wildly. You have never seen this girl stop moving for even an instant, always chewing or gesticulating or grooving to some internal symphony unheard by those in her environ.

ROSE: Yes, the sacrifices we make for modern consistency. I must admit likewise that this new system for determining accuracy is fairly rough on my mathematically disinclined self.   
ROSE: Thwacko, or whatever it is termed.   
JUNE: i just think of it like...   
JUNE: counting down to getting a hit!   
JUNE: and try to roll low to confuse my dice into getting high numbers!   
JANE: I think I shall never quite understand. Perhaps tables were easier in the first edition.

You sigh.  
ROSE: Well, while we can go back should the whole group prefer, I suggest we do our best to apply ourselves to familiarization with the new system.  
ROSE: It will not become any easier if we don't at least try.

Jane beams, standing straight for a moment.  
JANE: Ooh, I have an announcement!  
JANE: My father has procured an advance copy of the home video release of Ghostbusters II!  
JANE: I would very much so like to invite the three of you to view it at my abode a week from today, the 16th.  
JUNE: oh my god, that's so cool!  
JUNE: i wish my dad was cool like yours, haha!  
JUNE: i'll definitely be there! i only got to see it twice while it was in theaters.  
JANE: I'd be much obliged for your presence, June. :B

  


There is a knock at the door. As your mother is presently out-- a polite arrangement shared to allow you maximal use of the home with minimal embarrassment to either of you-- you must alone bear the risk of some kidnapper stealing away with your five-foot-two frame at the door. Luckily, one glance through the front glass reveals that it is just your cousin, Dave, making a rare house call.

DAVE: hey rose   
DAVE: long time no see   
ROSE: Dave.   
ROSE: I believe I charged you to never darken the Lalonde doorstep again.   
ROSE: And yet, here you are.   
DAVE: what can i say im particularly pesky like that

He wanders into your home uninvited, flashing a smile at your friends as they pack away their belongings and natter about school assignments.

DAVE: so listen hey  
DAVE: youre living the alternative lifestyle these days right  
DAVE: hey june

June passes by, and snorts a low, unguarded giggle as Dave regards her.  
JUNE: hey dave!  
DAVE: if yknow what i mean  
ROSE: I can only barely surmise, as is so often the case with your turgid ramblings.  
DAVE: wow okay first of all  
DAVE: if one of us is turgid the idea that youd accuse me of being the culprit is  
DAVE: wow  
DAVE: second can we just step back and appreciate exactly why you selected that exact word in this exact context  
DAVE: i mean if i had to guess id practically accuse you of trying to get me to laugh at the associated thought of a turgid co--  
ROSE: Please get to the point, mister Strider. I have agreed to begin preparations for dinner and mother will be home in some half an hour, so I have neither the time nor the inclination for more of your Freudian ramblings.

Dave bumps his shades up his nose.  
DAVE: youre all into the wizard shit these days right  
ROSE: Perish the thought.  
DAVE: but like i mean  
He grits his teeth, speaking out of only one corner of his mouth.  
DAVE: wizard shit  
ROSE: Surely you do not indicate this sort of fantastical diversion. Do you mean... some hypothetical spiritual beliefs?  
DAVE: yeah exactly  
DAVE: wizard shit  
ROSE: I am merely a dabbling member of some related church. In fact, I might even be offended at your presumption of an overlap between my generally witchy demeanor and whatever brand of truly gothy shit you are attempting to pin on me.  
You peer over Dave's shoulder, where Jane is politely gazing every which way but yours.  
ROSE: And perhaps such discussion of nonstandard faiths is not exactly welcome in present company.  
JANE: Hoo hoo! Just leaving, dear. Wouldn't want to intrude!

Dave then tells you, in excrutiating detail, the exact steps he took in discovering the town eccentric's need for a learned interfaith discussion with one inebriated in the tenets of Satanic thought.  
DAVE: and by the end of it she made it clear that she was getting up to some truly freaky shit inside that place  
DAVE: i bet its like when frankenstein got holed up in his castle and everybody was all  
DAVE: torches and pitchforks get him  
DAVE: while his giant weird lightning towers kept sparking up all sinister  
DAVE: despite clearly having nothing to do with actual meat resurrection because they had to zap it with a lightning strike anyway  
ROSE: David, Frankenstein was the doctor.  
DAVE: no rose frankenstein is the monster  
DAVE: did you even read the book the doctor was the bad guy geez  
ROSE: ...So you said she would like my assistance in some matter.  
ROSE: Well, if I should choose to ditch my mother's designs for my evening, I'm free as of... right now.  
ROSE: Good evening, Mary-Kay. I shall see you anon.  
MARY: See You Monday Rose  
ROSE: I can accompany you to her manse to see if I am to be the next victim of her bloodthirst or if she deigns merely to pick my brain in the traditional manner.  
DAVE: cool

\--

You expect, by the time you have left Dave's car and can get a full, unfettered view of your destination, that it is so imposing on the local landscape that even the birds themselves go silent in awe in its vicinity. It looks less like a private home so much as some combination of a church and a house of government, albeit with less formal concern with declaring its function to the outside world. You knock on the door, and stand back.

You have never met someone before who can pull off a welding jacket and mask simultaneously accompanied by a truly prodigious load of jelly bracelets before. The woman who has answered the door, however, appears to be just such a person, volumous mop of nigh-endless black hair spilling from a barely-structural hairtie and welding mask combo, which strikes a rather imposing figure this close to Halloween.

You bow low, and look her in the eyes when she flips up the face protectant.  
ROSE: I am told you require the services in information of one follower of the Dark Lord.  
ROSE: Well, _ave satanas_, it is I, I am she.  
ROSE: My cousin Dave has forthrightly told me of your need, and as I am truly benificent I render up my Saturday evening to assist you in your task.

She looks you up and down, trying to assess the likelihood any teen hooligan would attempt to accost her with this precise a jest. But then she grins, bouncing from one foot to the other for a moment.  
JADE: oh huh thats awesome!!  
JADE: (i didnt think hed be able to find one so quickly...)  
JADE: you dont look at all like i expected though, you're wearing so much lip gloss haha  
JADE: come on in!!

She begins to turn, but you hesitate, raising a finger to enumerate your terms.  
ROSE: Aah, no.  
ROSE: In order for me to exhume even the most innocuous of these skeletons which you seek to disinter from my backyard, I require recompense.  
ROSE: (No less for that quip about my appearance...)  
JADE: huh??  
ROSE: Come with me. We shall travel to my preferred parlor of pizza, and there you will purchase for us both the most important currency of all,  
ROSE: Several rounds of my ultimate debauched vice:  
ROSE: An arcade game by the name of Double Dragon.  
ROSE: Bring a roll of quarters.

She discards her welding mask and gloves agreeably, throwing them inside, but keeps the thick jacket on her person presumably as a bulwark against the encroaching early-evening cold. Inside, barking can be heard, but the woman ignores it. She nods to you.

JADE: im jade!!  
ROSE: And I am Rose Lalonde. Pleasure.

You extend a dainty hand, pinky extended, and your interlocutor immediately drenches it in sweat with her own besotten paw.

You set off together down the gravel drive, your cousin having completed his duties delivering you and thus forthrightly fucked off once more.

\--

Jade sets foot inside Pizza Pizzoletta like a... well, like a satanist entering a church, really. Since Dave drives an absolute mountain of the foodstuff to her home every week, perhaps she simply believes that pizza chains are the sorts of mafioso establishments in whence your movements are tracked and seditious behavior reported and discussed by rather serious men with gold watches stroking black cats before your summary execution and dumping outside the infidelitous eatery.

You guide her over to the machine in question, and at your pursed-lip smile the two small children gaggled around it, watching its Attract Mode flicker from hi-scores to poor recorded performances and back, scurry away to whatever holes in the wall they crawled from. You beckon to it, and Jade dutifully inserts the first two quarters.

ROSE: Here's everything you need to know about the plot of Double Dragon, right here, on this screen.  
ROSE: Watch.

A diminutive woman in a red dress is punched in the gut, and she is heaved over a shoulder to be hauled away like a sack of so many rouged potatoes, no words traded by any of the thuggish actors on the field. Jade's expression sours, lips pursed, but she watches along as your two characters spawn in, side by side, and takes up her control stick.

ROSE: Do you see? This is the narrative we're working with, the proscribed bounds we're given to struggle within. Your girlfriend, Marian, has been socked in the stomach and carried off by some particularly sweaty gentlemen, presumably to her demise. Unless you save her, vis a vis, pumping quarters into the slot or playing with mechanical precision unheard of in the mortal realms.

JADE: that looked like it hurt though!  
She guides her character to seize one of the computerized opponents by the hair, delivering a fierce knee blow directly to the unfortunate man's nose, and another, then a third.  
JADE: shes my girlfriend then??  
ROSE: Well, mine. Spare a touch for poor Jimmy Lee, who unlike his brother does not even, upon his success at his singular task in life, recieve for his conquest the bestowing of a fair maiden.  
JADE: and thats why you wanted to be player one :p  
ROSE: Yes and no; I wanted the lesson to be more salient, you see. Dave told me only a little about why you requested contact during his morning delivery, for I suspect you told him even less in the first place, and I thought as a levelheaded member of the spiritually alternative community I could perhaps elaborate about the underpinnings of my faith in order to facilitate your understandings.  
JADE: did he really mean it when he said you guys play dungeons and dragons??

ROSE: ...Yes, if he mentioned that, I did indeed have a session scheduled today.  
ROSE: You must forgive the abject cliché inherent in the happenstance of it.  
JADE: no honestly that sounds kinda cool!  
ROSE: You are most certainly correct.  
ROSE: Indeed, all that any notion of a 'Satanic Panic' has successfully rendered up to me was a feeling of unaccountable interest towards its supposed medium of expression.

ROSE: You will recall a decade ago, when a young man by the name of James Dallas Egbert III disappeared suddenly from the campus of Michigan State University.  
ROSE: (It just so happens that this young man shared a surname with one of my regular players.)  
JADE: :o  
ROSE: At the time, the Private Investigator sent to uncover his motives misapprehended his goal in escaping into the steam tunnels under campus to be a session of live-action Dungeons and Dragons, and the public consciousness was stolen.  
ROSE: Indeed to this day I believe mister Egbert to be the only player of the game to be portrayed by Tom Hanks in one of his films.  
JADE: wait  
JADE: egbert??  
JADE: thats my cousins name!!  
JADE: is she playing in your d&d game??  
ROSE: June Egbert, about yea tall, strong overbite like yourself, exceedingly dorky?  
JADE: yep! :B  
ROSE: Indeed she is. Marvel of coincidences, that.  
ROSE: Though it is a small town.

You muddle your fingers, tapping them on the stick as you adroitly maneuver Billy Lee across the stage to hurl several adversaries down an elevator shaft. Jade smacks buttons, flailing in circles to escape some headlock, but her health drains away and she slams another quarter into the slot with a groan.

ROSE: You see, the Wiccans adapted one of Aleister Crowley's 1904 works into their 1979 Wiccan Rede. This in turn became the basis for recent adaptations of the Satanic Bible, including LaVey's original prologue indicating that 'Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence'.  
ROSE: 'Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill-- _an harm ye none, do what ye will._'

JADE: but rose wicca isnt the same as satanism  
ROSE: Oh. Yes, that's absolutely correct, actually.

For somebody so willing to let you ramble on about the history and dialectics of your practices, you surmise that perhaps Jade is more familiar than she lets on, or has at least read the books.

Perhaps you should choose your words with more care.

ROSE: In fact, this is a core Satanic attitude that I believe the moral panics are based around.  
ROSE: Did you know that there are included in the Book of Lucifer-- within the Satanic Bible-- entire sections devoted to sexuality and the exploration of one's own sexual freedom?

Well, carefully chosen along one parameter. You're fairly sure the greasy teen behind the counter is staring at you, but as you flick your lavender orbs into contact with his eyes, accompanied with a careful smirk and able fingers continuing to uppercut and sidekick computerized adversaries all the while, he carefully returns his gaze to wiping down a parmesan-laden front counter.

JADE: uh vaguely i guess?  
JADE: its not exactly the bit i wanted your opinion about but i have to admit its pretty compelling haha!  
The impossibly tall girl laughs nervously, eyes still fixed on the desperate task of her onscreen survival.

ROSE: Really? Your primary interest was not in the matters of the Daughters of Bilitis? Not looking to join the Lavender Menace?  
ROSE: Then which part was it you were hoping for my opinion on?  
JADE: uh the book of belial actually!  
ROSE: Rituals and magicks. Well, I am... versed in them, yes.  
JADE: oh thats good!  
JADE: thats exactly what i was hoping!!

JADE: so this one ritual ive been reading about calls for a couple weird ingredients, but its from this other book so i wanted your opinion about whether or not you think its a real  
JADE: like magicy thing or not!!

You catch yourself stuck in place for a moment, attempting to parse the specifics of her request.  
ROSE: You wish to know about the validity of some specific spell?  
JADE: dont laugh!!  
JADE: its from this weird thing my grandpa left behind....  
JADE: it explicitly mentions lavey and some of the other satanist texts from around when it was written!  
JADE: it doesnt make any sense to me yet but i have to explore every avenue he left me because i have to know what he was trying to do!!!  
ROSE: Well, ah. Tell me, what were the components in question?  
JADE: nothing... animal of course  
JADE: gypsum dissolved in hydrocyanic acid!  
JADE: poured over a solution of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate  
ROSE: That sounds...  
ROSE: Exceedingly dangerous.  
JADE: yeah!! its gunpowder its very dangerous haha

The level concludes, and your characters wander off of the margins of the screen. As the points are tallied-- you come out significantly ahead-- Jade fidgets with the wad of bracelets on her arm, rolling and worrying them.

ROSE: I, aah, well, yes. Well.  
ROSE: Perhaps I am indeed not going to be able to offer you the best and most knowledgeable advice at a distance.

You puff up your chest, readying a little speech you've been mulling over since you got here.  
ROSE: For, indeed, this is the lesson Double Dragon teaches us: that any narrative at all, no matter how flimsy, can pay service to the notion that we are doing some justice in the universe, and that sense of justice is the thing that can drive us to condemn all sorts of innocent behavior.  
ROSE: The second game's arcade cabinet has no narrative at all, merely a sudden genesis of two gentlemen who interact with their whole circumscribed universe via punches and headbutts.  
ROSE: However, indeed, I've been told that the home console version gives a short treatment as here, but instead of the theft of your fair maiden she is summarily gunned down in the streets.  
JADE: thats horrible!!! D:  
ROSE: Is it, particularly? She is, after all, a mass of pixels, a tiny instrument of the player's decisively righteous path.  
ROSE: If we chose to not place the quarters into this machine, would we be causing Marian less harm?  
JADE: what??  
ROSE: If we chose to quit partway through rather than devoting our time, fiduciary well-being, and skills to rescuing her, would we damn her eternally?  
JADE: what??? D: D:  
ROSE: If we refused to purchase the home version of the sequel, would we perhaps be saving her life, eternally rescuing her from the state of urban murder statistic?  
JADE: rose!!! what does that even mean!!  
ROSE: Of course not.  
ROSE: She is electrons in a machine. She is not real.  
ROSE: No matter the service of her story and suffering to our sense of moral rectitude in the universe of the brothers Lee, no more or less harm will ever come to her. Smoke and nondiagetic mirrors.  
ROSE: Such, then, is my attitude towards matters Satanic: an enjoyable diversion, but not a notion truthful to any telling of the universe in which we reside.  
ROSE: That is to say, like other questions of spiritualism, magic is not, in fact, real.  
JADE: hmm!

Your game concludes; you take a short bow, having unsurprisingly lasted a great deal longer on Jade's two provided quarters than Jade was able to on her four. Nonetheless, Jade has requested you return to her domicile with her, and as you were so impressed with the exterior you would be an absolute fool to not at least indulge her in a tour of the front rooms. You might pass on meeting her dog, however; you've never been much for the canid sort.

As you meander back through the amber foliage, the _feuille morte_ dancing through the air of your town's outer boroughs, you ask after a struck nerve from earlier.

ROSE: So, riddle me this. You need to be in bed by ten, you say? You said that with such a degree of urgency, before. Do you just sleep obscenely much, or is it rather a matter of a strong morning routine?  
JADE: well sort of!  
JADE: its not that i need to use a bed its just  
JADE: whatever im doing ill definitely be asleep by then!  
Jade laughs, skull seemingly unpenetrated by the notion that this is an exceedingly cryptic statement even by your standards.

ROSE: Pardon? Care to explain that particular nugget?  
JADE: oh  
JADE: its not a big deal!  
JADE: i just do this thing where i have to sleep every 6 hours!  
JADE: its called polyphasic sleep  
JADE: so i only have to sleep 2 hours a day and it makes me VERY efficient, to keep working all the rest of the time!  
JADE: but when i have to sleep i have to SLEEP  
JADE: so i track it pretty meticulously and i have my watch set to constantly remind me when the time is upcoming!

Jade's watch beeps twice.

JADE: hear that??  
JADE: it gives a chime on the hour, every hour  
JADE: just a quick one!  
JADE: but two beeps means i have two hours til i have to sleep, so its 8 PM now  
JADE: and one long beep means i have one hour!  
ROSE: This is fascinating. Where can one learn such elder majjyks?  
ROSE: I long have waged a war against the obscene maltemperate designs of the sandman, and you could be a useful ally to turn the tide, and guarantee my eventual victory in this fight.  
JADE: its not that hard!  
JADE: i just read about how buckminster fuller apparently did it for like two whole years  
JADE: and decided i was done spending all my time in bed and not in rem!

You blink. You fail to comprehend what Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe have to do with successfully staying awake.  
ROSE: The band?  
JADE: uhhhh??  
JADE: rem sleep  
JADE: its what theyre named after....  
ROSE: Aah, of course.  
ROSE: T'was a joke.  
JADE: oh sorry for not catching it :/  
JADE: anyway this is just a way of guaranteeing that the brain goes straight into rem when you hit the ground  
ROSE: Ground..?  
JADE: or.... wherever you end up sleeping :p  
JADE: heck ive ended up all sorts of weird places haha  
JADE: but bec always drags me back to someplace thats at least comfy!  
JADE: or thats he thinks is comfy haha  
JADE: the number of times ive woken up in his doggy bed in front of the fireplace is too many to count!  
She chuckles to herself, and you can't help but laugh along with the truly absurd image.

ROSE: Well, as entertaining as the notion is, I'm afraid it would make school relatively inconvenient.  
JADE: ohhhh right thats a thing people do!!  
You boggle at her, just for a moment.  
ROSE: Aren't you 16?  
JADE: yeah??  
ROSE: So pray tell how you became exempt from the regular scholastic inculcation through which the rest of us must suffer.  
JADE: well my grandpa taught me plenty while he could....  
JADE: but even once i was on my own for it i figured id do a better job of it than any school could!  
JADE: i was doing precalculus materials by the time most other kids would be in the sixth grade  
JADE: and was reading scientific journals by eighth!  
JADE: so why not just keep teaching myself??

You tap your chin with a finger. As you narrow your eyes, Jade renders an inquisitive, almost chipmunk gander at your expression, as if trying to puzzle out the source of your relatively straightforward consternation.

ROSE: You're an autodidact.  
ROSE: This actually explains a great deal about you, inasmuch as it should have been absolutely obvious prior.  
JADE: haha thanks! :D

That was not a compliment, but you keep your trap shut.

Jade wanders up to the end of her driveway, and reaches into the padded end of her massive waygate. With a touch, it springs to life and groans open, sliding with prolonged complaint against gravel and concrete drive. She will later explain that any automated gate has a function to keep it from crushing cars, and that therefore they are all similarly insecure.

The indoors reminds you of nothing so much as a palace flipped upside-down. Each time you poke your head into an adjacent room from the foyer-- down the three steps to the kitchen, into the drawing rooms or boardrooms or whatever the hell these are-- you expect for space to wrap around you, to either stare into your own stunned face or to see the rest of your body from behind as it corners the doorway. Even the massive arched corridors feel simultaneously celestial and deeply, deeply wrong to the gut.

Jade humors your slackjawed nosing about for a minute, before leading you by the wrist to a bowed wooden door off of one of the nearby studies, too short for her to pass through without ducking. It leads down into a brickwork staircase into a basement of the same, dark, and evidently purpose-built. While only a single room, with no other exits, you surmise it is only one basement among this building's many winding passageways.

You pull the door to behind you, snuffing out the last glimpse of electric lighting as Jade sets to opening a flue for candle fumes in one of the corners. But when you see the floor, you reflect on the unwise irony of telling Dave that you expect to not be sacrificed this evening.

Ringing the floor in red chalk are two great circles, one inset in the other, dancing with carefully-scribed symbols-- astrological, greek, perhaps chemical or alchemical. The handwriting, even on the carefully-drawn symbols, is almost... cutesy? Against the far wall, a low altar, wooden offering box inset in mortared brick under two burning candelabra and swathed in crimson silk. Jade has already moved to a great circular table on one side wall, made of what appears to be some kind of heavy ebon wood.

Without looking to you, Jade waves a peremptory hand, ushering you over to it. If you were in a fantasy novel-- and you find yourself praying, in an awkward moment, that you are not-- you would call it some form of transmutation engine, ready to spring to life or begin some fiendish concoction, with little green flasks, phials, and philters arranged over low burners and jutting plastic tubes. Jade, evidently, has written many of the same symbols from the floor in a more durable, flowing ink all across the table's surface, in a pattern which you would conjecture was copied from some arcane source.

ROSE: So... when you say you've been teaching yourself, you mean...  
JADE: that ive gone as far as i can with just my grandpas old book and needed to seek out somebody who would take seriously the idea that i had to at least try to see what i could uncover from this thing!!  
JADE: i found it down here years ago....  
JADE: long after he was already gone  
JADE: and kinda discounted it as being more occultist nonsense before desperation and boredom got me to actually try some of it?  
JADE: no offense!!

She looks at you, startled expression crossing her cheeks, when she realizes how her words could come across, but you raise a hand.  
ROSE: Doubtless I am as surprised as you that any of this even survived in some musty old tome.  
ROSE: But... and how do I put this delicately...  
ROSE: From whence have you unearthed the notion that this is not all just for the same metaphoric, cryptic self-actualization fantasy as your average television psychic, or want ad?

Jade ponders that for a moment, then struts across the room with purpose, careful to avoid the scrawled sigil in the floor.  
JADE: here let me just show you what ive gotten to work so far  
She pulls from the altarbox a pouch, and from that pouch a handful of dust. She pours the dust, a white, crystalline powder, around the ring, careful not to land any outside the concentric discs or muss the writing just inside the inner line. She lights a small, white-headed match on the palm of her hand, wincing only slightly, and waits for the phosphor to glow down to the wood before casting it into the nearest part of the powder. At the instant the whole course of it flashes, she yells aloud.  
JADE: speak the earthly name of the one who calls you!

A great belch of smoke erupts from the center of the ring, a space empty of fuel sources, in a sudden gout both juddering and violent.

The unmistakable shape of some visage, rounded at the forehead, eyeless, presses out from it, like a screaming maw pushed through a film of plasticine. No sound ushers forth from its throatless mouth for a moment, and Jade puts her hands to her hips.

JADE: you have no idea how hard it was to find old white phosphorus matches haha  
JADE: watch closely, i dont want to do this over or have you think its some trick!  
A voice speaks, ringing from all around you, practically shaking the stonework with its booming baritone.  
: JADE PHILOMELA HARLEY HAS CALLED ME.

The smoke dissipates, just as quickly as it began. The channel of dust around the circle, which should have left some charred ring of spent matter, is entirely nonexistent, leaving the perfect chalk lines in which it flared untouched.

In the center of the circle a handful of blackened feathers-- midsized, from a seagull, perhaps, or some small cream-colored hawk-- lie likewise undisturbed.

They were not... there were no feathers, before. Jade steps over the liminal barrier and scoops them up with careful palms.

ROSE: Ave _satanas_, magic is _fucking real_.  
JADE: hail satan baby!!! :D


	7. Chapter 7

ROSE: ...and the flames rolled from her hand into the phosphor with the elegance of a fluttering moth, and in the crackle and burst of the wreathing smoke, then unquestionably some hideous, shapeless face, risen like some horrible masque, spoke her name with a thunder that... I mean, it could have been produced by some truly massive speakers, or the like, but the feathers, and the ring burning, and...

You run you hand through your hair, knocking off kilter your broad black hairband, and begin to reset it fretfully on your head. Morning classes don't start for ten minutes, so you've taken this opportunity to reconnoiter with Mary-Kay at her locker, by the third floor boy's bathroom.

Mary-Kay touches you on the elbow, squinting deep into one eye, then the other.  
MARY: Are You Quite Alright

ROSE: ...Yes. Yes, I am certainly fine, save slightly rattled. This was only two nights ago, but I've barely slept since; mother asked me where I was all day yesterday when I got home-- only slightly after dark, mind you-- and I assured her I'd been with you all day.  
Your friend arches an eyebrow.  
MARY: So You Lied To Her  
ROSE: Indeed I did. I wasn't sure how she would have taken a more honest answer, despite the fact that at least i could claim that I'd been studying.  
MARY: An Activity Not Even Out Of Character For You  
ROSE: Precisely. But no, I had to go, I had to gather materials, and I had to...  
MARY: You Had To Know  
ROSE: Not quite. I already knew, but I had to find out more.  
ROSE: Jade had clearly conjectured that she'd be able to ensnare my attention with her little show. She was quite right, and my interest is so piqued you might even call it a fresh obsession.

The tall girl sniffs. Perhaps you see a quirk at one of her eyebrows, but maybe you imagine it.  
MARY: I See No Way This Could Detonate In A Stunning And Ironic Turnabout Fashion  
She waits for a response, but you know your tightlipped silence will speak for you.  
MARY: I Do Hope This Will Not Disrupt Our Plans Tonight  
ROSE: No. No, most certainly not; the guide said a rerun was scheduled for this evening, yes?  
MARY: Indeed  
MARY: Of An Episode From Before The Inception Of Our Watchparties  
MARY: One Of The Title  
MARY: The Naked Now  
ROSE: Aah, yes. I'm excited for that, actually, if it's anything like the Original Series episode of similar name. Likewise I shall bring that lovely album, that which I mentioned wanting to loan you.  
ROSE: I believe you shall enjoy it.  
MARY: Im Certain I Will

* * *

PIPER: 1TS R34LLY  
PIPER: W4RM 1N H3R3  
Piper lets the bundle of clothing in her arms fall inelegantly to the dirty little carpet just inside your new mansion's front door, the near-disintegrated cardboard box previously holding them slumping and folding uselessly. She wipes her brow, taking a deep breath.  
SKATER: Yeah. She's 8een running the heat all day. Hasn't 8een out of the 8asement since lunch, though.

Piper peels off her green army surplus coat, the one with the superlong sleeves and the little plastic buttons all down the one side. The top button, the biggest, has a little caricature of some guy's face, emblazoned with the words 'ROCK US, DUKAKIS' in red and blue text. Neither of you particularly even care who that is; Piper merely acquired it out of an interest in giving the coat some texture. Underneath, your lieutenant is just wearing a plain black tee, soaked with sweat from your busy morning carrying belongings across town.

SKATER: You'll get used to it.   
SKATER: Somehow we all acclim8ted 8efore, got used to always wearing our coats inside, 8ut now...   
PIPER: NOW 1 JUST W1SH W3 COULD US3 Z4KS C4R   
SKATER: Sure, 8ut do you want to 8e the one to ask, and then to 8e 8eholden to him when he wants that favor repaid?

Piper lets out a complaintive grunt, sitting on top of the spilled clothespile. You upend your own armload into it-- scarves, socks, and a few sweaters accepting their fluttering doom as they splay alongside-- and flop into it. You both stare out the door in tandem, appreciating the tops of the trees just visible over the cresting hill, flanking the drive. Well, you do. You have no idea what Piper's focused on, but she looks a thousand miles away.

SKATER: I wish we had some fuckin' food.   
PIPER: UGH T3LL M3 4BOUT 1T   
PIPER: W3 ST1LL H4V3 TO N3GOT14T3 HOW W3 G3T 3NOUGH TO T4K3 C4R3 OF 4LL OURS   
PIPER: 3V3N THOUGH 1 C4N 4DM1T YOU D1D 4 GOOD JOB W1NG1NG US TH1S PL4C3 1 ST1LL DONT TRUST TH4T W3 C4N PUSH 1T TH4T F4R   
SKATER: 8ut for right now there's pizza in the fridge and some questiona8le steaks in the freezer.

Piper shakes her head.  
PIPER: H3CK 1 ST1LL JUST DONT TRUST TH1S TO NOT BLOW UP 1N YOUR F4C3  
But her expression falters, for a moment, before her face sets again.  
PIPER: 3V3N 1F 1TS YOUR 4SS ON TH3 L1N3 FOR 1T 1 C4NT H3LP BUT PR3P4R3 4 F3W CONT1NG3NC13S

You look over at her, watch her eyes, but she doesn't return your glance. You suddenly realize that you'll never stop feeling that way, neither of you, because it's been an everpresent force in your life: the belief that soon, imminently, something will topple over and force you back into survival mode. That there exists no 'something for nothing', that your whole life is _quid pro quo_. No matter how good life gets, or how easy it comes, you know you'll never shake the fear that you'll owe something far greater in return for it.

SKATER: You think I can't do it.  
SKATER: That's fine! That's fine.  
SKATER: 8ut, ah.  
You draw your thumb just under your nose, and wipe the resultant slurry on the leg of your pants.  
SKATER: There's no risk of that. She's pretty into me.

Piper sighs, shaking her head. She stands again, and starts throwing the clothes back into the barely-coherent container to one side.  
PIPER: 4ND YOU TH1NK YOU C4N P4RL3Y TH4T 1NTO 4 LONG3R 4RR4NG3M3NT  
SKATER: I'm sure I can. Have you seen the way she's eating out of my hand already?

Piper blinks blankly.  
PIPER: H4V3 1 S33N HOW SH3  
PIPER: NO 1 H4V3 NOT  
SKATER: You know what I mean.  
SKATER: 8ut in case you're serious, let me spell it out for you.  
SKATER: Already crying on my shoulder a8out her family. Dancing with me in your room, 8lushing with the little touches, 8ecause she just can't deal with the suave.  
SKATER: Can't 8lame her. No8ody can, when I turn on the charm.  
PIPER: 4ND HOW DO YOU F33L 4BOUT 4LL TH4T  
PIPER: SUR3LY TH3 1MP3RV1OUS SK4T3R 3VR1KS DO3SNT H4V3 F33L1NGS FOR H3R  
You cross your arms behind your head. You keep the gesture nonchalant, turning your face away from her to conceal the irritating heat radiating from your cheeks.  
SKATER: Wh8 the fuck does that mean?  
Piper says nothing, just keeps her level glare in your direction.  
SKATER: C'mon. You don't think I'd fall for a mark, do you?  
SKATER: Pipes, it's just another jo8. Easy as that.  
PIPER: MMHM

It's as easy as that. You're Skater, you don't get attached. You don't fall for people, it's not how you operate. You break hearts, you cut pursestrings, you take your winnings, you move on.

And you definitely got to sleep both of these past nights with ease, despite all the discomfort your cot might have caused. You're not the type to lie awake, tracing the outline of a face with an errant finger in the dark. Not out of anything but the knowledge of a thorough plan, executed with your trademark disconnection. You dreamt of the house, after all, not about her. You dreamt about the house, even if she was there the whole time.

Piper turns away, and lugs her box to the stairs up, kicking each step with a hesitant toe as she makes her way upstairs.  
SKATER: Surely you're not jealous of her, hmm?  
She scoffs.  
PIPER: OF WH4T  
SKATER: That I'm not trying to impress you like I am her. That we've known each other for too long.  
She hesitates, for a moment, and grits her teeth as she turns half her face to you, perhaps considering a snide remark. She shakes her head and continues up the wide, velvet-carpeted stairs, but can't resist a reply.  
PIPER: W3LL 3NJOY YOURS3LV3S 1 GU3SS  
PIPER: H4V3 4 GOOD T1M3  
SKATER: Already am, Pipes.  
You stand, kicking your shit back into a single pile to lift again.

You don't know what the fuck that even means, but you're sure as shit not gonna ask.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "'Man,' [Nora] said, her eyelids quivering, 'conditioning himself to fear, made God; as the prehistoric, conditioning itself to hope, made man--the cooling of the earth, the receding of the sea. And I, who want power, chose a girl who resembles a boy.'
> 
> 'Exactly,' said the doctor. 'You never loved anyone before, and you'll never love anyone again, as you love Robin. Very well--what is this love we have for the invert, boy or girl? It was they who were spoken of in every romance that we ever read. The girl lost, what is she but the Prince found? The Prince on the white horse that we have been seeking. And the pretty lad who is a girl, what but the prince-princess in point lace--neither one and half the other, the painting on the fan! We love them for that reason. We were impaled in our childhood upon them as they rode through our primers, the sweetest lie of all, now come to be in boy or girl, for in the girl it is the prince, and in the boy it is the girl that makes a prince a prince--and not a man.'"
> 
> -Dr. Matthew-Mighty-grain-of-salt-Dante-O'Connor, in _Nightwood_, by Djuna Barnes
> 
> This chapter contains some mildly insensitive discussion about matters of sexuality, trans status, and disability.

A moment's hesitation outside of Jade's house reminds you that you have not, luckily, taken the time to really drink in the exterior decor of her unbelievable dwelling past the façade. You would categorize this as luck, for it would have likely driven you far away from the place before you ever knocked had you done so before meeting the scatterbrained sweetheart therein; even now you think the gargoyles guarding the parapets are somewhat excessive, bordering on surreal. Still, on a frigid day like today, the bare-topped trees and yellow glow of the surrounding area set the scene for such a mansion perfectly. In this weather, you're thankful for long-sleeved dresses, adorned as you are in your finest black and purple for another exciting day exploiting the cosmos with a new friend.

> ROSE: Examine UNIVERSE.

You give three solid knocks on the door of Harley Manor. You spent your entire Sunday here after whatever evocational cacophony erupted Saturday night, and while the devilish schoolday (and other more personal matters) kept you away yesterday, this cloudy Tuesday afternoon is the perfect day on which to resume your quest for the secrets of the universe.

Your guide opens the door, already grinning wide.

JADE: rose!! hello!  
ROSE: Hey! You, uh.  
ROSE: Ears?

It isn't polite to point, and yet, you cannot help yourself but indicate the top of Jade's head, atop which have sprouted, rather unexpectedly, a pair of fluffy white ears, identical to her pet's. At least, you surmise they're not some sophisticated headband, given how they flick and turn, craning forward in interest when you imply what you think is a very sensible question about their provenance.

JADE: yeah!! :D :D  
ROSE: How, ears.  
Jade turns on a heel, the drape of her long skirt swirling in her wake as she walks back inside.  
JADE: come on downstairs and ill show you!  
JADE: ive been practicing the somatic transmutations listed in my grandpas notes!  
ROSE: Please tell me you didn't have to...  
But as she turns, you can tell she has trimmed a crude hole in the seat of the skirt, and right as you're about to ask if it's undue wear or some truly uncouth fashion statement, you notice the human-scale tail, composed of the same white furfluff, sprung from it. The tail rises and wags like a proper dog's would, massive wintry strands of thick undercoat trailing as she spins.  
ROSE: Is that a _tail_?

Luckily, your curtailed prior question is answered a moment later when her tremendous hound winds around a nearby column, regarding you with a tilted-head glance and deep _arf_.  
ROSE: Oh thank god.  
JADE: :D

But just as you and Jade are about to veer into the study under which the basement lab lies, a young woman slouches unexpectedly out of the kitchen, clad in long-sleeved blue-and-black plaid and a ratty pair of faded jeans. Her hair-- the jagged edges of which you'd wager, whenever they were last trimmed, were cut with craft scissors-- is barely longer than your own, and she mashes it over an ear and the arm of her glasses when she nearly bumps into Jade.

SKATER: Aah! What the f8ck!?  
JADE: oh hey skater!  
The tall girl-- Skater, you surmise-- blinks, and narrows her eyes as she turns, and you notice a strange hollow in one of her amber irises, practically shimmering as it regards you.  
SKATER: Who's this chucklefuck inv8ing my house? And what the fuck is up with the ears?  
JADE: oh! rose this is skater haha  
JADE: i forgot youd both be here today  
JADE: skater and a bunch of her friends are moving in with me!  
ROSE: I'm sorry?  
JADE: oh i didnt tell you?? haha lets sit down!  
JADE: ill explain the whole thing  
JADE: care to join us skater??  
You were rather hoping for the mutual solitude of Jade's absorbing presence, today. People make you itch, outside of specific and understandable contexts, and you only assented to see Jade today out of her ability to become completely enraptured with a task to the point of disregarding you entirely.

Skater, by her derisive gaze, already seems the sort whose skin skitters with a controlled sort of laconic fury. But you're happy to regard Jade's whims, so you proceed into the carpeted boudoir.

You can see Skater shrug out of the corner of your eye, and she follows along, brushing with black-nailed forefinger some crumbs from the corner of her mouth of whatever she ate for lunch today.

\--

From your plush overstuffed chair in the front parlor, you point a disassured finger towards Jade, seated at one end of the high couch, and make efforts to avoid eye contact with Skater at the other. Jade fidgets in her seat, still trying to roll her hips such that the tail projects someplace that doesn't put pressure on her tailbone, alternating sides and finally lying sidelong with her legs tossed onto an ottoman.  
ROSE: So tell me if I've got this right.  
ROSE: She broke into your home, and stole a number of your possessions.  
JADE: well yeah! but she gave back the stuff that mattered  
Jade shrugs, and you can hear Skater snort, which you ignore assiduously.  
ROSE: Regardless. And then upon requesting you account for the lack of amenities in the warehouse in which she was squatting... demanded she be allowed to live in your home proper?  
Jade shoots a look over to Skater, who takes it upon herself to shrug this time.  
JADE: i offered first!  
ROSE: Did you?  
JADE: :/ yes!  
ROSE: And you.  
You swing your accusatory digit in Skater's direction, and raise a querying eye. She looks at you politely, smiling.  
ROSE: How long, precisely, were you planning to take up Jade on her particularly beatific offer?  
Skater lies back in response, tossing her feet up onto the couch-- practically into Jade's lap-- and rolls her head onto the wooden arm of it, just behind the lion's-paw curl at the front. You don't miss the casual slump with which Jade rests an arm over her shins.  
SKATER: Still getting my feet wet. Hadn't thought that far ahead.  
ROSE: So, perhaps indefinitely.  
SKATER: Perhaps. ::::)  
She slides a little further, proffering up more of her limbs for Jade to drape across, anoint with contact.  
ROSE: And...  
ROSE: Pardon me for asking, as I know I've known you, Jade, for less than seventy-two hours, and you, Skater, for fifteen minutes, but...  
ROSE: Jade, you don't feel... taken advantage of?  
Jade's not even looking at you at this point, even when she answers your questions.  
JADE: not really honestly!  
JADE: skater made a great point the other night  
JADE: im not exactly hurting for space here  
JADE: and i really like the idea of just having more people around!  
ROSE: Be that as it may, are they... paying rent? Buying food for themselves?  
JADE: huh?  
JADE: no why would they im the one with all the money  
She chuckles, as though this notion of giving away what you surmise is a sizable fortune and resources is somehow strictly necessary.  
SKATER: Why are you acting like there's some huge pro8lem? She's just a good person, and it's not like we have elsewhere to turn!  
JADE: exactly!!

You'd like to think you have a well-honed bullshit sensor. Of all the things you'd ever praise about Jade, even having barely met her, you get the sense that she doesn't, and you doubt it was suddenly adopted along with the other bits she picked up from her dog. You wouldn't call her 'guileless', exactly...

No, you really would. If your read of the situation is accurate, and it is, Jade really should be worried.

Everything about this situation stinks. Welfare's one thing, but...

ROSE: Pardon me for sounding like a Reaganaut, but--  
You hear these words as they leave your mouth, catching amongst your teeth and tangling like fishing line.

Both girls arch their eyebrows, even as you suspect they're both too caught up in themselves to know the full extent to which your political linguistics have betrayed the obvious stupidity of the point you were about to make.

You stumble on your tongue for a moment, feeling out an ostensible alternative.  
ROSE: --But Jade, what exactly is the benefit you reap from this particular arrangement?  
JADE: haha why does there always have to be something in it for me?  
JADE: cant i just be doing something nice for this person i--  
Her next word stops in her throat, and she blinks. You watch her brain quickly cut together some alternate text, and her dogears flick with the conscious effort. It was very nice of her to install three easy tells onto her body for reading her emotional state.  
JADE: --think is really interesting??  
Oh. Pieces begin to fall into place. Jade's blind trust, sudden guests, a mind clouded with eros, advantage taken.  
JADE: in fact thanks to our recent discoveries i think i can even be of more help to you guys! :D  
JADE: for instance  
JADE: skater!  
Jade springs from her recumbent pose atop Skater's legs, plain black skirt swooshing with torsion from her tail and hips. Her whole tone has shifted, practically floating to the ceiling with a sudden joy.  
JADE: what if i told youuuuu  
JADE: you could change anything about yourself you wanted?? :D :D  
Skater watches her, saying nothing, and betrays no shift in posture, certainly nothing that matches what Jade must think is an exuberant revelation. Jade's effusiveness rises, bubbling with hastening words as she details her new gift to the world and its inhabitants.  
JADE: like how i was experimenting around with something rose and i were working on the other day and found out i could do this!  
She points to her ears. In the corner of your vision Skater shifts, arms recrossing faster with each word.  
JADE: just think!! anybody who wanted to could change their eye color, or their hair, or fix a broken arm, or...  
JADE: if somebody was blind they could probably get their sight back!  
Skater just glares. Oh, shit. You begin to reach for Jade's arm to shake her back to attentiveness.  
ROSE: Jade--  
JADE: if they were missing a--  
SKATER: Humph! May8e you'd fucking like that!

She's leapt to her feet now too, voice breaking instantly into a fever pitch.  
SKATER: The ears are f8cking cute, 8ut I don't want to hear another g8ddamn word a8out what you think you can give 8ack to people.  
JADE: but i can help fix--  
The instant acrimony in the air lends Jade no instant to explain herself. It's as though an airlock has opened right into a vasty nothingness and sucked all the atmosphere from the room into Skater's body. She clenches her fists, arms wide.  
SKATER: Did we ask for your help? Did we?  
SKATER: You wanna fix me? That's what I'm hearing! Or Piper?  
SKATER: Martin's whole... schtick?  
JADE: D:  
JADE: i didnt mean--  
But Skater's voice is barely a whisper now, head drawn down to her rumpled shirt.  
SKATER: No. I 8et you didn't.  
Jade is frozen for a moment, trying to gaze into her crush's face to discern where she committed the worst offense. Her body slumps into a heaped mannequin of apologetic limbs, still standing. Hands barely kept from her face occlude a dance of expressions, pulled like taffy between what she clearly thought would be a joyful sentiment mixed with the brutal reality of her suggestion.  
JADE: how can i...  
SKATER: Leave.  
She barely murmurs it, but when her whole face turns upward again the burning in her eyes fixes itself on Jade.  
SKATER: Now.

You can hear her bawling as she goes, but it sounds far away, almost muted.

Your own body, during this sudden tempest of emotion, has folded like wastepaper, and you somehow force your knees sideways in the chair in front of you so it doesn't look like you're hiding your belly from predators. What has Jade done? Not in the realm of magic, but in the clearly terminal case of canine-foot-in-mouth disease that would bring her to suggest bodily augmentation to a disabled woman.

Skater clenches her fists, staring you down. But you sit, watching her, trying your best to keep your expression neutral.  
SKATER: Well? You're not going to sprint after her, see to her feelings? Aren't you going to t8ll me I'm overr8cting?  
You shake your head in tiny lines, eyes fixed on her.  
ROSE: Certainly not. I'm sorry that she just did that, I think. She must not have known how you'd feel.  
SKATER: No shit.  
ROSE: No, I mean...  
ROSE: She wouldn't have said that if she knew how you'd react. It's pretty clear that she wouldn't try to harm you, except that apparently she just had no idea about the... eye.  
SKATER: This isn't a8out that. You think I give a shit about my eye? I can see fine, it doesn't 8ug me.  
ROSE: Don't you?  
She sweeps her bangs out of her face, shoving her glasses up her nose superciliously.  
SKATER: I know what you're thinking, that I assumed her o8vious crush would hold her 8ack from saying something stupid. So I must 8e feeling '8etrayed'.  
ROSE: Well, what is it about, then?  
Skater's knuckles grow just slightly paler, nails digging into palmflesh.  
SKATER: Nothing. It's a8out noth8ng.  
ROSE: Really?  
SKATER: Why the f8ck do you care?  
She practically spits this, but holds her ground, stance wide, each breath stuttering with restrained anger.

You blink.  
ROSE: Well, I know that if somebody offered to 'fix' me, I'd be quite cross, even absent any particular lack in physical ability.  
Skater blinks back, muscles in her arms slackening almost imperceptibly.  
ROSE: Not to disclose too much to a new acquaintance, but I've read enough Gore Vidal to know what happens when one decides to change certain aspects of themselves for the benefit of society.

Skater's mouth falls open, and one of her eyes tugs up to a contorted sneer. The rounds of her teeth rise as if to bear forth words, but she puts a hand to the couch behind her and sits on it again, crossing her legs underneath her.  
SKATER: You're...  
ROSE: Sapphic? Batting for the other team? Dredging the well of loneliness?  
Skater's back teeth fairly clack, face transmuting into an expression illegible to you, somewhere between pain and accusation. You raise an eyebrow.  
ROSE: Inverted?

At this Skater's eyes flare and glow.  
SKATER: You're m8king fun of me now. F8ck you.  
ROSE: Surely not. I am merely detailing my own experiences on the hypothetical pain of conversion.

Skater points a finger at you, then clenches it back into her ragged palm. She clicks her tongue against her hard palate and sighs, whole body softening.  
SKATER: Y'know what? Fine. You wanna know why this makes me mad, I'll f8cking tell you.  
SKATER: 8ut if you 8reathe a word of th8s to any8ody, J8 especially, you'll 8e 'inverted' in m8re ways than just your sexuality.  
She hasn't relaxed, but you can tell already if she's smoothed her countenance enough to rely on verbal threats instead of physical ones, that's at least a good sign.  
ROSE: ...I don't doubt it.  
SKATER: What the fuck does that even mean, though? Inverted.  
ROSE: Oh, the inversion theory of sexuality?  
You sigh through your nose. You really wish you hadn't chosen that word, because it's not like you'd love to explain Ellis or Krafft-Ebing to strangers.  
ROSE: Well, for now let's ignore the quaint particularities of the men who coined and popularized the term. It's the notion that gay people have 'souls' of the opposite gender and therefore tend to exhibit characteristics of the other sex.  
ROSE: Effeminate gay men, masculine lesbians, and so on.  
ROSE: A bit antiquated of a term, perhaps, though I can't claim to have read much on the biology of the brain.  
ROSE: The mind of the craven homosexual, however, I'm quite familiar with, though it's not like I particularly expect to ever be allowed to wear a tuxedo to my wedding.  
Skater raises an impatient eyebrow, leg bouncing with quiet unease.

You hear quiet footsteps on the entry-hall tile, and spin from your chair to ensure that Jade is not snooping. But the only possible observer present is a young boy, probably one of Skater's aforementioned friends, just entering the house now; a snot-covered mohawk sprouts from his lumpy head, and his huge, wet eyes portray a youth perpetually seconds away from a cathartic bawl.

You creak the parlor door shut, just barely making silent eye contact as it clicks to. You sit once more.  
ROSE: Anyway, enough about me.  
ROSE: What were you hoping I'd say?  
The woman sitting across from you tents her fingers. Her steady gaze follows yours, watching for some minute betrayal.  
SKATER: Do you ever think that you might've 8een...  
SKATER: That you might have 8een reincarn8ted as the wrong sex as punishment for something you did wrong in a past life?  
ROSE: I... can't say I've ever had the thought, no.  
SKATER: I think a8out that a lot.  
ROSE: But you're asking if that's why I'm... attracted to women?  
She catches your confused look, and backpedals into the couch, hands raised.  
SKATER: Not like that.  
SKATER: W8, we weren't talking a8out--  
ROSE: I was talking about being gay. I'm a lesbian. What were you--  
SKATER: So what!? I'm gay too, 8ut I was--  
ROSE: Did you mean...  
SKATER: --just sure that--  
ROSE: That you wish you'd been... born a boy.  
SKATER: ...Not that direction, no.  
ROSE: Oh.  
Jesus.  
ROSE: Sorry.  
SKATER: 8ut, you're not...  
She scowls, words trailing to silence. Thankfully, there's no outburst like there was for Jade's snafu, just silent vigilance. You scour your memory for some relevant recollection, but come up mostly empty. Except...

You sit up, straight-backed in the chair, synapses suddenly pealing with an appropriate point of connection.  
ROSE: Like-- the doctor, then.  
SKATER: What?  
ROSE: There's this book from the 40's, _Nightwood_, one of the first lesbian novels. In it, there's... a character rather similar to yourself. Her name's Dr. Matthew-Mighty-grain-of-salt-Dante-O'Connor.  
Skater raises an eyebrow.  
ROSE: She's a brilliant wordsmith, though quite a poor doctor. I owe a good number of my own personal metaphors to her, you see.  
ROSE: Less gendered ones, and more...  
You snap your fingers as Skater's incredulous expression turns slowly warm, interested.  
ROSE: Not to reveal too much, but her ability to keep the world at bay with stories, words, diversions, and expressions is very important to me. I understood a lot of myself when I read about her, when I realized that she had a horrifying power that even the novel in front of me could never truly glimpse.  
SKATER: Can we not 8e talking a8out you right now? Please.  
ROSE: Right. She's... while I may not know much about what you're going through, I promise you I can find some sympathy.  
SKATER: Gr8. So you're not like me at all. You're normal.  
ROSE: I take offense to that.  
SKATER: Well, get this. I still fucking h8 the idea that she wants to 'fix' me. After all, I worked pretty fucking hard to 8e the woman I am today, and I won't have that played for laughs or fucking 'fixed'.  
ROSE: Doubtless. Would you... like me to go speak to Jade? Not in terms of this, just...  
SKATER: Na'ah. I'd h8 for you to fuck this up, ruin this good thing I've got going on.

Skater crosses her arms, sniffs showily, watching you for a reaction. But all you do is scoff.

You stand, and move to the crossbarred window, gazing out over the overgrown lawn beyond it.  
ROSE: Look, I just met her, but I can presume a few things about Jade.  
You hear a shuffling, then slow footsteps across the carpet. Skater's voice emanates from just behind you, sounding scratchy and tired, but you examine the outdoors studiously.  
SKATER: Like?  
ROSE: First that she's... lacking in certain awarenesses, social graces.  
SKATER: Ya don't say.  
ROSE: But that she clearly cares so deeply about how other people regard her that she might give up literally anything to preserve that esteem.  
You turn, put out a slow hand to one of Skater's arms, which are crossed at her plaid-clad chest. She flinches, as though you had attempted a palm-heel to her liver, and takes a step away. You recoil your hand, running splayed fingers up the back of your own head.  
ROSE: And I can tell there's more to your feelings about her than you let on.  
Skater pinches her lips.  
ROSE: And that's alright! I know what it's like to be scared of that feeling, to fear being understood.  
ROSE: It's just...  
ROSE: You're aware of what we-- she, I suppose-- is undertaking downstairs, yes?  
Skater shakes her head in silence.  
ROSE: It's... well, I can't rightly say I know the first thing about it either, but it's the source of her newfound... canine characteristics. She's clearly discovered some lay-line concentration, some form of _literal magic_, that I believe to be at her whims and direction to affect the world, and herself.  
ROSE: I'm certain of very little, so far, save that, unlike its depictions in religious texts, its connections are paid for in incantations and ceremonial ingredients, rather than blood. And the benefits are real, as you no doubt saw in her transformations. She's excited to share that with those she's closest to.  
ROSE: Which is you, as I've gathered from the portion of this conversation in which she took part.

Skater's eyes grow wide, but she blinks them back down to a furrowed-brow scowl.  
SKATER: I don't care.  
ROSE: But it's--  
SKATER: I know what it's like to get offered something for nothing. It always sounds like a gr8 option until you learn exactly how 'free' some8ody's gift was. It only takes once 8efore you've learned the hard way to never take them up on that one.  
SKATER: So you'll excuse my skepticism towards your little 8asement tea parties, especially since you seem to 8e such a stickler fuddy-duddy for me and mine to not take advantage of Jade's kindness. Which, fuck you for that, 8y the way.

Her finger prods you, digging at your chest like the point of an implied knife. Or one of the teeth she's baring, just at the corners of her downturned mouth. But you don't collapse back with its pressure-- somehow-- and despite your stature you stare her down regardless.  
ROSE: You want me to say that I don't feel that way since we've talked face to face.  
ROSE: You are. I'm going to say it again, I think you're taking advantage of her.  
SKATER: Y'know what? Yeah, I am.  
That light in her eyes has drifted towards what you would call, if you were in a less sensitive mood, deranged. She snarls.  
SKATER: I'm going to drain her dry. I don't give a single shit a8out her, or anyone.  
SKATER: If you're so fucking sure a8out it, why don't you try to stop me? Why don't you protect your new fucking friend?  
SKATER: If you're so close to her, just pull me off like a leech, 8ecause that's what I'm gonna 8e to her if you don't stop me. It's not like I care a8out her enough to stop on my own.  
ROSE: And that's not... something for nothing?  
SKATER: Fuck you.  
SKATER: You know noth8ng a8out what I think of her.  
SKATER: You don't know shit a8out the person I am today.  
SKATER: And you sure as f8ck don't know a thing a8out who I used to 8e.  
SKATER: I don't care what fucking 8ooks you read, or how well you think you can analyze me.  
Her breath seethes between clenched teeth hard enough that you're pretty sure you see steam. The rolling boil at her cheeks and the searing squint of her eyes doesn't help matters, either.  
SKATER: You think you're 8etter than me. You think you deserve what you have, and I deserve to rot in a ditch.  
SKATER: I clawed my way out. I'll never go 8ack.  
ROSE: Out?  
SKATER: Y'know what?  
SKATER: I'm d8ne wasting my time on you.  
She spins away, stomping towards the door.

ROSE: Don't hurt her.  
SKATER: Wh8t?  
She doesn't even face you again, fists balled at her sides. You can hear the grinding of her teeth, regardless.  
ROSE: You're right. I don't know how you feel.  
ROSE: Alright? I can't tell at all why you're doing this. You don't want to let me know, that's just who you are.  
ROSE: But please, for Jade's sake, don't...  
ROSE: Just don't hurt her.

The slam of the door knocks dust from the high beige-painted trim, fluttering down to the narrow fireplace, the dog's bed in front of it, and the dented antlers haphazardly adorning each wall. You flop onto the couch, and curl your legs up, breathing as deeply as the sudden shudders that grip your body will allow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The terms 'trans man' and 'trans woman' will not be coined until Leslie Feinberg uses them in 1996 in _Transgender Warriors_. Likewise the term 'cisgender' will not exist until 2006 when first used in an article by Julia Serano. Isn't language fun?


End file.
